Summary: A little merman falls in love with a human prince. To stay with his prince forever, what will the little merman do? Ask the witch to transform the prince into a merman, of course. FujiTezu friendship. Sort of.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Once upon a time, in a small but prosperous kingdom under the sea, lived Fuji Syusuke, a young male famed to be one of the loveliest mermen in the world. Every day he would sit in his little room, affectionately cuddling his beloved spiked coral and admiring his own tail. It was such a splendid tail—every passer-by would look at it longingly, unable to take their eyes off the wonderful sight. It seemed to change color when one looked at it from different angles, shimmering in shades of cerulean. It was not overly flashy or glittery, but once one set eyes on it, one sort of got addicted.
When Fuji Syusuke was a child, his mother often told him, "Syusuke, with such a tail like yours, if you are ever seen by those greedy humans, they will definitely capture you, cut off your beautiful tail with those huge saws and use it as expensive decoration in their houses. You don't want that, do you? Therefore, Syusuke, repeat after mommy: I will never, ever go onto The Surface."
"I will never, ever go onto The Surface." Young Fuji Syusuke would always nod obediently, a charming smile on his face.
"Good. Now, your brother Yuuta has a very plain tail, so he can go wherever he wants," his mother continued.
Fuji Yuuta, who sometimes eavesdropped on such conversations, would hide in a corner and weep, lamenting the fact that he had a dull brown tail instead of a magnificent multi-colored one like his brother's.
What Yuuta didn't know was that his brother had envied him ever since they were little. Fuji Syusuke had always wanted to go to The Surface, to see the sky, watch the clouds, and to find out himself whether humans are really as selfish as his elders told him. He wished that he did not possess such a special tail. True, it was nice to have others gasp and point in jealousy when they saw him, and it was also nice that he was very popular at school because his classmates would look at his tail to cheat on exams, but he still wished—wait, why did his classmates look at his tail to cheat on exams, you ask? Well, in fact it was because he had a large World Map right there on his tail. There were little spots indicating every mountain and lake, as well as detailed information on the capital of each country. The higher lands were depicted in the most incredible red color, the plains a soothing, tender green. Water was shown in cerulean blue, which matched Fuji's eyes. Fuji had no idea how he had grown such a strange tail, but it certainly came in handy—even Fuji himself used it to cheat on exams at times.
Perhaps it was because Fuji's tail was so unique that everyone he knew was almost stiflingly overprotective of him. His parents told him that most humans did not believe in the existence of mermen, and would immediately send weird machines down in the ocean to invade their peaceful little kingdom if they saw one. Fuji did not believe that it was so. He always dreamed of reaching the human world, partly due to the fact that his crazy scientist friend Inui had been to The Surface frequently said otherwise, and partly due to that the more one was told not to do something, the more one wanted to do it. No one besides Inui and Fuji's best friend Eiji knew about this secret desire. Eiji was actually in the same situation as Fuji: beautiful tail, attractive appearance, overprotective parents and siblings. The two sympathized with each other, and often dreamed about the human world together, wondering out loud what the mysterious land was like.
"Gakuto has been to The Surface so many times." Eiji was complaining one day as usual. "Everytime he comes back he tells me a lot of cool stuff. I do want to see it for myself. Why can't I go? It's not my fault that I have a tail that exhibits movie posters."
Indeed, Eiji's tail was his biggest problem at hand. It was always overly colorful, showing posters of the latest films. At that particular moment the words "Kung Fu Panda" as well as a large picture of said panda were blatantly grinning up at them from his tail. Not even Eiji himself could be sure when his tail would change into a different movie poster. Sometimes it was not even a poster—there was the time that it somehow showed an election campaign flyer for Hillary Clinton, and the time that it exhibited a picture of Shirota Yu out of no particular reason. Since he was little, whenever others saw Eiji's tail change color, they would know that there was a new movie in the theaters and go to see it together. Even outgoing Eiji was finally tired of being stared at so much, which was probably why he found Fuji so agreeable as soon as they first met.
"I know it's not your fault, Eiji, but there's not much we can do about it. Let's go to Inui's house and ask him some more questions about humans," Fuji suggested.
Inui was the only merman the two friends knew who had a steady job in the human world. He worked for a Japanese game show called Sasuke, which involved muscular people taking on challenges that required a lot of strength, balance, speed and stamina, like climbing steep walls and jumping across extraordinarily wide gaps. Some of the challenges had underwater content, and the challenges were often held at sea so if the contestants fell from a high spot they would not hit the ground and die. The game show company needed someone to record the underwater happenings with a camcorder, as well as keep track of the time, and Inui, a natural in water, was hired. Inui had fitted a LED screen on his tail, enabling it to show numbers, letters and simple pictures. It was convenient for the show and, better, waterproof. Inui was a skilled actor, so only a rare few human beings knew of his true identity. Most thought that he was just a very good swimmer with a fake tail, pretending to be a merman and acting as the show's mascot. He was widely popular among children. Sometimes when people saw Inui, they would pat him on the shoulder and say: "You're wonderful, Mr. Inui. After all, everyone knows that there's no such thing as a merman. I admire you for being willing to go around wearing a fake tail just to fulfill the dreams of little kids. We won't know what to do without you, Mr. Inui."
Inui could only smile, a little sadly, in reply.
"But listening to Inui talk about humans is no fun. It will only make me want to see them even more," Eiji pouted.
"Maybe we can ask Inui to find a way for us. After all, Inui is so smart. He must be able to think up a plan so that we can elude our parents and reach The Surface," Fuji said thoughtfully. Though he wanted to see humans every bit as much as Eiji did, he appeared to be much calmer when he was around Eiji. It could be because Eiji was just too impatient.
"Cool! Yay, let's go right away," Eiji exclaimed, dragging Fuji happily towards Inui's coral reef castle. Having made quite a large amount of money on The Surface, Inui was rich enough to build a castle for himself, and one with a moat too. We have no idea why he wanted a moat even though he was already underwater.
Inui was in a small room busily investigating a glass of strange green liquid, but he was not a bit surprised by the visit of his two friends.
"I knew you would come," Inui stated simply, lifting his tail for the two to see. In large green letters, the tail stated, "Possibility of Fuji and Eiji coming here today: 100 percent. Possibility of me being chased by a shark today: 0 percent. Possibility of me choking on water today: 386 percent."
"Wow, Inui, you are really clever," Eiji cried in honest admiration at the correct prediction.
"Nah, I'm not clever. It's just that you're too stupid," Inui calmly replied. It was good that Eiji was already too used to his rudeness to feel hurt.
"Well, the reason you are here is to ask me to think up a way for you guys to go to The Surface, isn't it?" Inui went on, lifting his glasses as he spoke. Yes, he still wore glasses in the ocean, because if he didn't he would not be Inui.
"Yes. Inui, you really are clever," Eiji gushed happily.
"I know," Inui nodded, not a bit embarrassed, "and I do have a plan. The fireworks show of the Neighboring Kingdom, held once every ten years, will take place two days from now. The royalty will come to the ocean on a ship to watch the fireworks. The wonderful thing about fireworks is that they are extremely noisy. That way, if you kill somebody with a gun, you can hide the sound of the shot in the midst of the noise of all the fireworks exploding. That way, people will not notice that you have shot someone. I believe this method was employed in one of Agatha Christie's novels."
"Wow, Inui, you are so smart," Eiji lavished Inui with praise.
"I am." Inui lifted his glasses yet again, trying to look modest.
"But we are not asking you how to kill people. This has nothing to do with what we want," Fuji pointed out.
"Ah, true. What I wanted to say was, your family will surely go to The Surface to watch the fireworks go off. Everything will be chaotic, and I believe that you will be able to reach The Surface without being seen, because there will be so much going on. The royal people from The Neighboring Kingdom will all be on the ship, so you can take a good look at them to see what humans look like. According to my data, Tezuka Kunimitsu, the prince of The Neighboring Kingdom, is quite handsome." As he spoke, he exhibited a rough picture of Tezuka's face on his LED-screen tail. Since he had only green-colored LED lights, Tezuka's face appeared to be green.
"Do all humans have green faces?" Eiji wondered.
"This is a LED screen," Fuji explained. "Not everyone has such a colorful tail like you, Eiji. Inui, how many pixels do you use for your tail?"
"I recently updated the software, so—" Inui began.
Realizing that the conversation was going in a boring direction that he didn't like, Eiji quickly jumped in to stop them from going on. "Aw, Fuji, let's go prepare already. We are going to The Surface in two days!"
"Okay, okay," Fuji smiled. "Very excited, aren't you, Eiji?"
Despite that he looked relatively composed, Fuji was just as excited as Eiji was. All night, his dreams were full of amazing fireworks, luxurious ships, and the green-faced Prince Tezuka.
TBC. Thanks for reading:D Reviews are very welcome.