MASG chapter 119

 

The fish pond was filled with seawater, with which Mo An was extremely familiar. He had once dived to depths of tens of thousands of meters, so a few meters shouldn’t have caused him any harm. However, reality dealt him a heavy blow. As a mermaid, he did not have human swimming abilities. When the seawater covered his head, he couldn’t breathe at all.

His gill slits hadn’t appeared yet, so Mo An choked on a mouthful of water.

Could a mermaid who could extract oxygen from seawater actually drown?

Yet, Xia Yu always arrived before death. When Mo An touched Xia Yu’s fingers, this was proven true once again.

The fish in the pond had long since fled in fright, hiding somewhere unknown and not daring to surface. Xia Yu didn’t have time to wonder why the carnivorous fish had disappeared so suddenly. He only wanted to save the person. Mo An’s silver hair stood out under the water, like a light bulb calling to him. After grabbing Mo An’s wrist, Xia Yu’s feet landed on the pond’s bottom.

With one final push, he pulled Mo An upward.

Splash, splash! Two more sounds of people entering the water rang out as Lao Gui and Xia Xiaoxiao jumped in at the same time. Lao Gui had learned to swim at a young age, so this was no problem for him. He dived more than one meter deep to help Xia Yu so that Mo An wouldn’t pull them both down. Xia Xiaoxiao grabbed the iron ladder with one hand and reached into the water with the other. When Lao Gui grabbed Mo An, she grabbed the boy’s hand, everything was finally foolproof.

The mermaid Mo An was salvaged just like that, with no dignity of being a fish left at all.

Fifteen minutes later, Zhang Mingqiao and Xia Li stood in the living room with a dining table full of delicious food behind them. The couple had carefully prepared today’s meal, making dishes that Xia Yu and Xia Xiaoxiao usually loved most. In the morning, Xia Li had noticed that Mo An really liked butter-fried small silver fish, so she had recreated the dish that evening. Zhang Mingqiao had bought a cake specially for tonight’s dessert.

However, now all this food had become the backdrop to the scene in front of them. Three children stood there, dripping wet, water still dripping down.

“Dad, Mom, we…accidentally fell into the water.” In the end, Xia Yu spoke first, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

“Lili, hurry and get bath towels.” Zhang Mingqiao suddenly shivered and pulled himself out of the confusing scene. He ran to the storage room, grabbed some towels, and placed them one by one over the children’s heads. Only then did he pause and ask, “What happened?”

“It was…” Xia Xiaoxiao, wrapped in the big bathrobe her mom handed her, had only said one word before her brother spoke.

“It was when we were on the way home. We accidentally stepped into the fish pond.” Xia Yu resolved some problems with a smile. “Dad, tomorrow, let Lao Gui install a few more lights over by the fish pond.”

“Really?” With such obvious cover-up, how could Zhang Mingqiao believe it? “Xiao An, what exactly happened?”

Mo An was still touching the side of his neck. There was no movement at all from the gill slits. “It…it was because of me. I wanted to see if I could swim.”

“He tried. Obviously, he can’t,” Xia Xiaoxiao added.

“Mm… I guess I can’t.” Mo An looked gratefully at Xia Xiaoxiao. Without everyone’s help, Xia Yu might not have been able to save him. “This was purely my fault, not theirs.”

“What’s there to blame? It was just too dangerous. You can’t be this reckless in the future.” Xia Li came around from behind and exchanged a look with Zhang Mingqiao. “Go upstairs first. Take a hot shower, and then come back down. Don’t catch a cold.”

After the children went upstairs, the couple wiped up the water and discussed that they needed to arrange not only a science tutor for Mo An but also a swimming coach.

After such a big incident, it was impossible for Mo An not to be shaken up mentally. While taking a hot shower, he repeatedly checked his body but couldn’t find any sign of mermaid transformation. After finishing the meal, homeroom teacher Chen Ailu sent him a message telling him that he didn’t need to do the English homework and should focus on math instead. Do the problems he knew, and leave the ones he didn’t blank.

Why did he still have to do homework in the virtual world? Sitting at the desk, Mo An wanted nothing more than to hurry up and take Xia Yu and Xia Xiaoxiao away.

In another bedroom on the second floor, Xia Yu was helping his sister dry her hair. “Your hair’s gotten a bit long. Do you want me to go with you to get it cut shorter this weekend?”

“Anything’s fine. Shorter is good, too. It’s convenient for riding and going out to sea.” Xia Xiaoxiao was a girl who loved sports and sunshine, with wheat-colored skin. She rubbed her eyes and turned her head to ask, “Brother, you’re really good to Mo An. When you jumped into the water to save him today, you scared me to death, you know?”

Xia Yu wound his fingers around his sister’s hair. Ever since they started school, he had been the one to dry her hair. He protected her as if she were his own eyes and confided in her. “Don’t worry. My swimming skills are very good.”

“How could I not worry?” Xia Xiaoxiao lifted her bangs. Once her full brows and eyes were exposed, the siblings’ facial contours looked even more similar.

“Sigh. Being nice to him is just human nature. After all, he’s already so pitiful.” Xia Yu placed the towel over his shoulder. “We’re closer to Dad and Mom. He’s like a wild child who no one cared for while growing up. Even Dad doesn’t know what kind of life Mo An had in Qingyao City all these years. We have to help him integrate into this family. We can’t exclude him.”

“I’m not saying I won’t help. It’s just that in the future, please don’t ever let him ride a bike or swim again.” Xia Xiaoxiao stuck out her tongue with a smile. She was also curious about Mo An’s past. He was just too mysterious, to the point that he didn’t seem real. He appeared out of nowhere and became a member of their family. There were many unreasonable parts to this.

But Xia Xiaoxiao couldn’t figure out exactly what was unreasonable. Forget it; don’t think about it.

After drying his sister’s hair, Xia Yu put away the hair dryer, draped a jacket over himself, and looked toward the staircase leading to the top floor. After Mo An went up, he hadn’t come back down. Was he worried about scaring him again?

Actually, Mo An wasn’t that scary. When he wasn’t causing trouble, he was a very considerate younger brother. It was just that this younger brother was too tall, and he was extremely courageous.

Xia Yu had never had a younger brother. He only had a twin sister. After thinking it over, Xia Yu returned to his room, picked up the math test handed out that day, grabbed his pencil case, and bravely walked up the stairs.

Mo An was worried inside the room. Even facing the sea and listening to the waves could not ease his dislike of mathematics. The attic had a floor-to-ceiling window, and his desk was placed right beside it. A gentle sea breeze carried the scent of the ocean into the attic. However, when it blew onto the test paper, only endless unsolved problems remained. Just then, there was a knock at the door. Mo An turned around and saw Xia Yu standing in the doorway. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, holding a snow-white test paper in his hand.

“Sorry, am I disturbing you?” Xia Yu asked softly.

All the usable space on the third floor was given to Mo An. It could be considered a large suite—the bedroom alone was as big as his and Xiaoxiao’s rooms combined. But when Xia Yu saw Mo An sitting alone at the desk, he felt a pang of sadness, thinking that Mo An looked very lonely.

He grew up alone in Qingyao City, never experiencing fatherly or motherly love or sibling affection. No one must have cared about his academic situation either. Otherwise, how could he not know how to solve a single problem? With that thought, Xia Yu walked in. “Want to do homework together?”

Everything felt so beautiful, like a dream. Mo An stood up eagerly, knocking over the chair in the process. He hurriedly set the chair upright. “Is that okay? Together?”

“Of course. Look how big your desk is.” Xia Yu moved a chair over, placed an identical test paper on the desk, and pressed it down with his pencil case. “If you have any questions, just ask me. I’m not the best at math in the grade, but I can stay in the top ten long-term.”

Just these few sentences made Mo An’s heart start pounding wildly. He lowered his head, sat down, and obediently tucked in his long legs to make space for Xia Yu. He was afraid there wouldn’t be enough room. “I’m bad at studying. Do you really not mind?”

“I do mind.” Xia Yu smiled as he opened his pencil case.

“Huh? Really?” Mo An immediately lifted his head, his brows drooping.

“So you need to hurry up and learn.” Xia Yu was amused by Mo An’s expressive face. “Hurry and write. Leave the questions you don’t know blank. I’ll explain them to you later.”

“Okay, okay.” Mo An nodded quickly. The math paper and the scenery outside the window both looked pleasing now. He picked up an ordinary ballpoint pen and wrote his name on the paper. The blue ink seemed to have some kind of magic, calming his constantly restless heart.

The white gauze curtain was gently lifted by the sea breeze. When it draped over the desk lamp, the desk was covered in a pearly sheen.

As Xia Yu wrote, he tilted his head and asked, “The second multiple-choice question is a bit difficult. Can you do it?”

Not to mention, Mo An didn’t understand the first question either. He shook his head reservedly. “I can’t. Can you explain it to me?”

“Sure.” Xia Yu wasn’t afraid of trouble. He took a set square and a mechanical pencil out of his pencil case. “This is a solid geometry problem. You need to draw three auxiliary lines. First, let’s look at line segments AC and AE…”

What AC, AE—none of it existed in Mo An’s mind anymore. He could only focus on Xia Yu’s fingers drawing the lines and how he used the set square, as if creating a piece of art. It was strange—he clearly understood every word Xia Yu said, yet at that moment, he wasn’t processing any of it. Mo An just wanted to keep looking at him, listening to him speak without stopping.

“And then, on the auxiliary line, take the midpoint as point G.” When Xia Yu said this, he looked up, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Why aren’t you looking at the paper?”

“Huh? Oh, oh, looking at the paper.” Mo An hurriedly looked at the question. What was going on? When did so many line segments appear on the problem?

“You…” Xia Yu shook his head. “If you’re not looking at the paper, then what are you looking at?”

Mo An’s face turned red. “Looking at you.”

Those three words hit the problem like a powerful force, wiping away all the auxiliary lines and scattering the painstakingly marked letters into disarray. Xia Yu immediately pinched the pen tip and tightened the set square in his hand. That strange feeling rose in his chest again, making him blink rapidly.

“What are you looking at me for?” He immediately returned to normal. “There aren’t any questions on my face. Look at the problem.”

“I am, I am.” Mo An pressed his lips together tightly. “Teacher Xia, you’re fierce.”

“How am I fierce? You’re the one who isn’t studying properly. The monthly exam is coming up soon. With your grades, you’ll definitely be at the bottom.” Xia Yu spoke earnestly. He turned the mechanical pencil around and tapped Mo An’s undyed hair with the blunt end. “Study properly.”

With you here, how could I possibly study properly. Mo An could only think this while trying to memorize the material. Even if it was by rote memorization, he couldn’t be at the bottom. After Xia Yu finished explaining the question, the two of them returned to doing their homework. Mo An still couldn’t understand the questions, but he wrote down every formula that Xia Yu listed beside the paper, not missing a single one.

Just as he was about to use those formulas to solve a fill-in-the-blank question independently, the sky flashed.

The gentle, pearl-like glow from before instantly dimmed. The wind lifted the curtains high, nearly blowing their test papers away. Thunder followed closely behind, accompanying the lightning as it struck the sea surface again and again.

“Another thunderstorm.” Xia Yu got up to close the window. “This is the downside of living on the coast. You haven’t experienced this kind of extreme weather in Qingyao City, have you?”

He had seen it before. Thunderstorms over the ocean in the real world are ten times more terrifying than this. But Mo An suddenly rolled his eyes and unexpectedly shook his head. “No, I haven’t. It doesn’t rain like this in Qingyao City. This thunder… it’s really scary.”

“It’ll probably rain all night.” Xia Yu sighed.

“All night?” Mo An perked up. Since Xia Yu was being so good to him, could he push it a little further? “Actually, I’m really afraid of thunder. When I was little, I slept alone and it traumatized me.”

“Traumatized?” Xia Yu put down his pen. My god, did Mo An’s mom not care about him?

“Yeah, it was a big trauma. When it rains and thunders, I can’t be alone, and I don’t dare turn off the lights.” Mo An began to retreat to advance. “Forget it. Telling you this… I’m already this old. I can’t ask my dad to sleep with me.”

At least this way, Xia Yu would stay and keep him company. Mo An calculated in his heart.