SG 3

At five in the afternoon, the final show ended. After showering and changing, Chu Baiyan picked up his fishtail and went to the parking lot to drive to a commercial performance scheduled for eight that night.

The fishtail looked light and elegant underwater, but it was actually heavy. With the fins, fabric, and all the attached decorations, it weighed about five kilograms. Since he often took private gigs and had to bring his own fishtail, carrying it by hand wasn’t practical. To make work easier, he had bought a Haval H6, sturdy and spacious enough that he could sit without bumping his head, and it was affordable.

Being a mermaid performer was a short-lived job, one that depended on youth. When he started in mid-May, it was the start of tourist season, lasting until after the October holiday, with five shows per day and decent pay. But by mid-October, it shifted into off-season, reduced to three shows a day and lower income. Whenever local businesses booked him for a single paid performance, he accepted as long as his body could handle it.

Chu Baiyan rented an apartment in the residential complex across from the ocean park. He could walk there in minutes through the underground passage, though driving required a small detour of less than ten minutes. He didn’t like sharing spaces with others, so he rented a studio by himself, paying several hundred yuan more per month than his coworkers. He often joked that he “wasn’t born rich but still caught a rich man’s illness,” yet he never tried to save that money. If he couldn’t even satisfy the most basic comforts of living, then there was no point in living at all. When it came to food and housing, he never treated himself poorly.

He made something simple to eat, rested for a bit, then took his car keys and went downstairs. Tonight’s performance was at an indoor diving pool inside a shopping mall. The space was small, which made it more demanding for mermaid performers. Unlike at the ocean park, there were no safety divers. For the sake of visual appeal, the pool floor had lots of decorative coral and reef props that could easily snag a fishtail if he wasn’t careful. Chu Baiyan stayed fully focused, and even though the show lasted only fifteen minutes, it was more exhausting than two regular performances.

By the time he returned home, the surrounding buildings were lit up. The light spilling through the windows made his room seem less empty. He changed into slippers, grabbed a towel, took a shower with real soap this time, and lay comfortably on his bed. He reached for his phone, opened WeChat, and accepted the payment transfer for the night’s show.

His bank account had a little over three hundred thousand yuan, not enough to count as wealthy, but not poor either. Half of that came from his family’s demolition compensation during his sophomore year. He had spent some on tuition and his car, then slowly saved up again after becoming a mermaid performer. When he refused to let his mother’s old house be replaced by a new apartment in the demolition deal for his father and stepmother, things exploded. He broke his stepbrother’s arm, cut ties with his father completely, and blocked all contact.

He had never once regretted it. When his mother died after the college entrance exams, he had already lost his family. The only reason he kept up appearances was because the old house still stood, and since he studied away from home, he didn’t see them often. It was all just hollow politeness.

In this city, he had no relatives or friends, but he actually enjoyed his life now. Being alone and quiet wasn’t bad at all. Just as he was about to close WeChat, he suddenly remembered the link his coworker shared earlier. The mermaid plate design perfectly matched his costume from tonight’s show.

Out of curiosity, he opened the post again and zoomed in on the photo several times. On the tag that said “Not for sale, for display only,” he noticed a tiny logo – Starfish Pottery. Whoever made it had paid incredible attention, even replicating the tail’s patterns exactly, which meant they must have admired his performance. As he scrolled through the photos, he started to wonder what kind of person the artist behind the plate was.

Near closing time, Yan Anqing sneezed while checking the shelves. From five to ten in the evening was his least favorite time of day. Most tourists who returned from the ocean park would eat or stroll nearby, which made it the busiest time for his pottery shop. That meant he couldn’t work on clay and had to stay at the front to handle customers. Unlike other shop owners who dreamed of booming business, his ideal was simple: just enough customers to earn six thousand yuan a month.

When too many people filled the store, he became restless, and if someone talkative showed up, he grew even more nervous, sometimes tugging his pant seam without realizing it. He had already written answers to every question he could think of on the product tags, but some customers came in asking endless questions like walking encyclopedias. But during this disliked time slot, he could at least watch SpongeBob SquarePants on his tablet while tending the counter.

After finishing inventory, he recorded the day’s numbers on his phone and planned tomorrow’s production schedule based on the remaining stock. The clock on the wall showed ten exactly. He locked the door and ended another day. Before going upstairs, he checked on the starfish in the tank, said goodnight to them, and then gently wiped the mermaid plate on the counter with a soft cloth.

When he was little, his grandma told him bedtime stories. Every time, he asked for The Little Mermaid. After hearing it countless times, he once asked her why there was a “daughter of the sea” but no “son of the sea.” She told him that Andersen never met a “son of the sea,” so he wrote about the daughter instead.

The first time he saw that silver-haired performer with a gray-blue fishtail gliding through the fish, he looked like a prince patrolling his underwater kingdom. In that single glance, Yan Anqing’s eyes had been drawn to him completely. Andersen never met a son of the sea, but he did.

“Good night.” Yan Anqing set the plate down, turned off the lights on the first floor, and went upstairs.

In the morning, sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains, splitting the bed into two uneven patches of brightness. Yan Anqing got up early, washed, opened the kiln, had breakfast, and started making pottery. At 10:45, he changed into a light green T-shirt and went out to see his “mermaid prince.” He liked orderly, predictable days, where everything followed a plan.

The magic of big data was that once you clicked on one link, every similar thing followed you afterward. After seeing “Starfish Pottery,” Chu Baiyan had searched it up himself. There were dozens of pottery shops with that name across the country. He thought that was the end of it, but a few days later, while browsing social media, he came across another post featuring the same plate. This time, the blogger wrote that they had found a “hidden gem pottery shop” while visiting Jindu. Everything inside was handmade, beautifully designed, and the shop owner was an “incredibly good-looking guy.”

There was no picture of the shop owner, but the post had many photos of the ceramics, and the cover image was that same mermaid plate, which the blogger called “the store’s treasure,” something that could be seen but not touched.

Chu Baiyan searched the map. There were only three places named “Starfish Pottery” in the city, which made it easy to narrow down. He checked them one by one and found that the nearest one was right at the entrance of his residential complex. He realized that even though he had lived there for over a month, he had never explored the area beyond the breakfast stalls.

After finishing his last show and dinner that evening, he followed the map directions out the gate. He discovered that all the breakfast stalls, small restaurants, fruit shops, and supermarkets clustered near the metro entrance, the area he visited most often. The other side of the gate had a flower shop, a laundromat, and a small hotel, which he had never had reason to visit. The pottery shop was on that quieter side, so it made sense that he had never noticed it even though it was right there.

Streetlights glowed through the tree branches, scattering patches of light over the sidewalk. The early summer breeze brushed past his face along with the sound of cicadas. Passing a few pedestrians, Chu Baiyan walked down the row of storefronts, checking each sign until he saw the one that read “Starfish Pottery.” He looked at the logo on his phone’s screenshot, and to his surprise, the first shop he tried, chosen simply because it was close, was the one.