"Oh!" the handsome young man with long blue hair tight on a ponytail and deep blue eyes smiled at them. He was on the back garden, sitting on the grass under a big tree. He was wearing white and black stripped jibei. "You are real! People were talking about the red mermaid who saved Muramasa and I had to check it out!"
Sakuno walked towards the young man and kneeled in front of him. Sakuno touched his face, investigating his eyes.
"Are you…really like me?"
"Yes." He smiled gently at her. "Nice to meet you, Sakuno-san."
Toshio looked at Ryoma.
"You must be her husband, Ryoma-san. Nice to meet you too."
"Are you here to take her away, Toshio-san?" Ryoma asked, worried.
"What?" he was embarrased. "No way! Merpeople mate for life and I already have a wife for myself! She is back home, our first child is going to be born next month."
"Mate for life? But... you had a mate, right? Her name was Aki, a human." Ryoma sat by his wife's side.
"How do you know about my grandmother?"
"I got a manuscript! It was a diary of a human named Aki and she lived with a merman named Toshio and…" Ryoma remembered the last page of the manuscript and how Aki had died alone on the cave. "Ah, it cannot be. Aki-san, she died on the cave, right?"
"Not at all!" he laughed. "That was just one of the diaries she kept. She lost it after they moved from there. Since wintertime was very severe, my grandfather, Toshio, had to swim long distances to find them enough food. Doing it so in the frozen ocean can be complicated, so he took a long time. My grandmother told us she thought she was dying, but actually she was just having some real bad symptoms of pregnancy. My grandfather returned home just a couple of days after she finished that journal."
"So… she did not die? And they were able to have kids?"
"Of course! Granny died last year. She was 98 years old and passed away on her sleep. They had five children. My mother is the youngest of them. I am 22 years old now. I am a second generation."
"Is it really possible for us to have a healthy child?" Sakuno grabbed his hand and looked at him hopeful.
"Of course it is." His blue eyes were kind at her, trying to ease her mind. "Although I'm an only child, our family is really big!"
"How about your wife? Does she know about your nature?"
"Well, I had to tell her. She wanted to divorce me, thinking I was having an affair! Since I don't have full merman blood, I can control my tail a little. My mother can also stay away of water for a couple of days. If I go inside the water, my legs don't transform automatically and I can be away from the water for five days. But, I need to go to the sea on full moon nights. If I don't, it really hurts!"
"My legs hurt too!"
"It is horrible, right?! I would sneak out of the house and my wife was suspicious. I had to tell her after a while."
"How did she take it?"
"She was shocked at first, but then she got use to the idea. We always have lived near the sea, so things are easy."
"Toshio-san, can you tell us how pregnancy is for merpeople?" Sakuno touched her belly. "We are going to have a little girl and there is so much I don't know."
"Oh, you are expecting! Congratulations to you two. Well, nobody knows why, but it's more difficult to a merman to have a child with a human. For mermaids it is really easy. It just takes one time."
"Oh, no! It didn't happen just once. We had lots of sex!"
Ryoma blushed profusely, but Toshio only laughed before continuing.
"If the mother is human, the pregnancy time is 9 months. But, if the mother is a mermaid, it only takes 6 months. They cannot be swimming around with a big belly for so long."
Sakuno and Ryoma looked at each other and smiled. Kaori was right after all.
"Also, the mermaid mother can know the sex of the child, like you already do."
"Toshio-san, how does your family raise the children? Is it possible to be together with other humans?"
"Well, having to jump naked on the ocean from time to time is a little complicated when you live in a human town, but, we have our own place."
"What do you mean?"
"There is a small town at the south that is made with merpeople and regular humans. It's like a big family. It's also on the sea side, so all the houses have their own private dock. The ocean is always available. Everybody helps each other. I work there as a builder but we are always in need for new people."
'Ryoma is a doctor."
"That is nice! We could use you there."
"But, how do you communicate? I thought different clans couldn't understand each other." Sakuno said.
"Generations with human blood get along just fine." He smiled. "Why don't you go live there? It is an awesome place and it's inside a deep forest, so there are no dangerous humans around. You can raise a family safely there. I left for a while to work in another city, but I returned after I got married and told my wife about me."
He stopped for a while looking at Sakuno and touched a lock of her hair. Ryoma was a little jealous.
"People will get excited on knowing there is still a red mermaid around. You probably are the only one left.
"She says she has always been alone."
"Well, that is expected." He said, sadly. "The red merpeople were extinct because of predatory hunt. My grandfather said that the last one he saw was a couple 100 years ago when he traveled on Muramasa's water and the female was pregnant. They were probably your parents, right?"
"100 years? But she looks my age!"
"My grandfather looks about my age." He grinned. "Merpeople grown until adulthood and it goes very slowly from there. They only get gray hair up to 700 years old. It is really scary sometimes, because we are pretty much alike."
"He is still alive? How old is he?"
"341. He is still around, but he spends most of his time on the water since my grandmother passed away. But he comes to land once in a while, especially when there is someone new in the family. He is probably going to come back when my child is born."
"Can I ask you something more, Toshio-san?"
"Of course."
"Did your mother hunt when she was expecting you?"
"Oh, yeah. It scared the hell of my father. Once he woke up and she was chewing a shark on the kitchen." He laughed.
"She ate a seal." He pointed at his wife.
"It takes their bodies a while to adapt to a child with human blood, so they need extra nutrients. My mother was very sick when she was pregnant on the first weeks, so her body needed to compensate. It is like an instinct thing."
"Ah! Like bears going on hibernation or fishs going to the rivers to breed."
"We are not fish!" both of them scolded Ryoma. They looked at each other and giggled.