Chapter 158
Outo is the capital of Fusang, but in essence, it is a relay point linking Kaiyo Port, Tengaku, Shin, and Chinju.
For that reason, a single broad avenue runs straight through the middle of town from south to north, as if the highway had simply been extended.
A road also extends east from the center of town to carry food to Tengaku.
To the west, meanwhile, a waterway rather than a road extends directly to the sea, connecting it to Outo.
Thus, Outo's eastern side is designed with the winged folk in mind, while its western side accommodates the merfolk, and humans live between the two, alongside both.
By the time dinner had been cleared away, it was fully night, and a beautiful moon hung in the sky.
The home I was shown to on the western side of town was a large estate... or rather, a dojo.
Ah, I suspected it might be, since he was so strong, but he really is associated with a dojo.
He was probably too old to be the current master, so he must have been the previous or even the one before that.
I was a little surprised that someone like that had been casually drinking himself silly at a restaurant in town.
"What gives? You're not very surprised."
I nodded at the disappointed-looking Gon-jii.
Well, I mean, I'd spent a long time living at a dojo myself.
Being led to a dojo only made me feel a little nostalgic; it didn't make me panic.
Rasen Spear Style.
That was what was written in large letters on the dojo's sign.
I was somewhat interested in that as well, but merfolk came first.
Gon-jii led me inside, stringing me along a little despite my eagerness.
That said, he didn't take me into the dojo itself, but to the front of a large pond in the garden.
She sat on a large rock in the middle of the pond, gazing at the moon in the night sky.
A mermaid whose lower body, fused together from around the thighs down, was covered in scales.
Young, beautiful, and intensely alluring.
Gon-jii had told me she knew a great deal about the past, but nothing about her appearance suggested it.
"The pond in my garden is connected at the bottom to a nearby waterway. If you dive in, you can come straight from the waterway into the pond. Hey, Mizuyo, I'm back!"
Gon-jii's voice was full of pride and good cheer, but when the woman called Mizuyo turned around, her expression was thoroughly displeased.
Even with that displeased expression, I thought it was unfair how beautiful she was.
If a well-proportioned face were all it took, I had seen plenty of elves and high elves, so they did not move me much.
But this mermaid's beauty was bewitching and voluptuous.
"Gonzou, you're late. Hosting a guest is the head of the household's job. Yet you leave me behind and go drinking in town alone? I simply can't believe you."
And even her voice was beautiful.
The merfolk I had seen at Kaiyo Port, hauling small boats, had all been men, but... now that I thought back, I supposed their features had been quite handsome.
However, they had not made enough of an impression for me to remember them, so perhaps she was exceptional even among merfolk.
"No, I haven't been the master of this dojo for a while now, so that logic doesn't hold. Besides, Mizuyo, you won't drink with me, and you tell me not to drink because I'm already old. That's why I was drinking with this pointy-eared young man."
Gon-jii looked entirely unrepentant.
Yet even with such a careless introduction, I didn't know what to do either.
Her gaze turned toward me, but I merely gave a small bow and pointed at Gon-jii with my hand.
I wasn't going to take the pass that would let him off the hook.
I wanted the two of them to go at each other to their hearts' content.
My business could wait until afterward.
Apparently, Mizuyo understood what I meant by that gesture, because she continued to lay into Gon-jii.
After a while, Gon-jii finally seemed to realize that he was at a disadvantage no matter what he did...
"Oh, come to think of it, young man. You're staying the night, aren't you? I'll have someone prepare your bed, so talk with Mizuyo until then."
He left us with those words and fled inside the dojo.
His blatantly obvious escape made Mizuyo and me look at each other and laugh, despite having just met.
Gon-jii, despite being well into old age, had fled like a child who had been scolded by a parent.
"Honestly, Gonzou is hopeless. It's nice to meet you properly. I'm Mizuyo, though you probably know that already. ...But you're not just an ordinary elf, are you? The water is positively frolicking."
Mizuyo and I then faced each other properly.
I had heard that merfolk could control the flow of water, but that claim surprised me somewhat.
It seemed that she could not only interfere with the flow of water, but also sense the water's feelings.
More precisely, they were the feelings of the spirits dwelling in the water.
But Mizuyo, being a mermaid, presumably couldn't see spirits, so she perceived them as the water's feelings.
The difference in how we perceived it was mildly interesting.
If I taught her about the nature of spirits and how to convey her feelings to them, would her ability to control the flow of water grow stronger?
Or was her ability to control water entirely unrelated to spirits, leaving it unchanged?
Depending on the result, I might at least be able to draw some conclusions about this ability to control the flow of water.
I found myself wanting to try it.
"That's right. I'm Eisa. We call forest folk elves in my homeland, but I'm a high elf. As living beings, we're not all that different, but high elves have an especially close bond with spirits."
Mizuyo wasn't surprised by my introduction; she simply nodded as if satisfied.
This was how I met Mizuyo, the mermaid who taught me the history of this country.