Soulmate

After tying up the strings of her outer blue robes embroidered with pink flower patterns, Lin Mei placed the crimson pearl she had just painstakingly recovered from the deep body of water inside one of her bell-shaped sleeves. She stared at the moon for a few moments.

Every time she gazed at the moon by herself she felt a sense of loss, as if it truly wasn't right for her to be cherishing its splendor alone, as if once upon a lifetime ago, someone was holding her hand and enjoying the moonlight with her. She was not sure if she had always felt such a way or if it was a hormone-influenced state, her body and brain reminding her that she was still without her life partner at such an age. Her mother would have been distraught if she were still living.

Although the merfolk usually lived for about 100 to 120 years, it was very common for them to find their life partners at a young age, yet she was now 27 and had not seen a glimpse of them. Could it be because she had never really put much energy into it?

Every year merfolk from all the five oceans had a three-day gathering with the single males and females of age of every clan, yet every year she would direct all her efforts into not mingling with other people.

She found these gatherings (or rather, any sort of overly social activity for that matter) annoying and overwhelming, and would always sneak out as quickly as she could.

When she was younger she would even make up reasons not to attend these bothersome social events whatsoever: she pretended to be ill, pretended that her younger sibling was ill, pretended that her cute sea bunny1 Muri was ill...

One time, she even made herself fall ill by traveling all the way to the cold waters of the Snowflake Ocean and remaining there until she couldn't feel her tail.

But now that she had grown older, her father would urge her to go. Even if there was an enormous, apocalypse-inducing storm, the king would endlessly pressure her into attending the annual meeting. And she knew her mother would have insisted she went as well.

"What a troublesome family...", she thought.

Even her elder sister, who had also been single up until the prior spring season would irritate her to no end, pressuring her to take part in the celebration by making traveling plans that included her, buying jewelry and other accessories for her to wear at the gathering in the week that preceded the event, and, most tragically, literally dragging her along.

If even her paranoid sister had found her lost half, how could she not? It wasn't unheard of for merfolk to find their loved ones after the age of 30 or even 40. It was just uncommon.

She had also been waiting for him for quite some time. Ever since her mother instructed her to find him over seventeen years ago, she had decided to look for her person, the one mother had told her she could rely on for days to come. It's just that she abhorred all aspects of those contrived meetings and her instincts told her that's not how she would meet that person.

And to her defense, a mermaid had very keen instincts when it came to finding out if one was their destined partner or not. So she believed that once she put her mind to it she would be able to find them no matter what, unless they were dead, in which case wasn't it better not to have looked for them at all? Lin Mei sighed deeply.

Although she was still a little apprehensive about finding her other half, it was when she looked at the bright full moon that she felt like she couldn't keep living without meeting them. Her heart longed for them as though she had known them for a long time, and it felt like her heart would rot and die if she wasted another day without seeing them. With her heart in pain, she felt a tear streaming down her face but quickly wiped it off with her hand.

"What a peculiar half-fish I have become... I might be truly sick in the head." She shrugged her arms and shook her head in disappointment. "And I used to believe myself to be the sane person in a world of strange people... Aya, how things have turned..." She scoffed at herself, successfully escaping the sorrowful mood she was in a few moments ago.

Taking a last glimpse at the moon, she turned around to leave, but as soon as she did, she was startled by a pair of murderous eyes and a sword pointing at her throat.

1. A sea bunny is a sea slug that looks like a rabbit, it's adorable, I recommend you look it up

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150723-sea-slug-nudibranch-sea-bunny-ocean-animals-science