Shattered Bubbles

"Excuse me, miss, but may I ask who you are?" The Prince's question, laced with doubt, pierced the Mermaid Princess's heart. She had given up so much for him and done so much, only to get this in return. Was this some kind of joke?

"No, William, you know me. We looked into each other's eyes. You recognize mine, don't you? I'm the one who saved you. The neighboring kingdom's princess is a liar!" The Mermaid Princess's psychic power spilled out in her agitation. Everyone around them clutched their heads, dizzy and nauseated, as if they were hearing a low-frequency sound.

The old wizard frowned and released his own psychic power, counteracting the waves radiating from the Mermaid Princess. The Prince, who had heard her voice from within his soul, looked stunned. Then he moved his lips and finally said with a bitter smile, "I don't know whether you really saved me or whether you've fallen into some kind of delusion, miss. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that the neighboring kingdom's princess, the woman I intend to marry, really did save me. I'm completely sure of that."

"You must be under that woman's witchcraft. I'll free you..." The Mermaid Princess hadn't finished speaking when the old wizard snorted. "Miss, your aura is impure. I don't like that neighboring kingdom's princess either, but I swear on my honor as the royal court wizard that the Prince is not being controlled or bewitched by anything. And I saw with my own eyes that the neighboring kingdom's princess saved him."

"That's impossible! I pulled you out of the water and brought you ashore. I saved you!" The Mermaid Princess was starting to lose control. Her psychic power continued to pour out, reflecting her crumbling state of mind. Back then, she had carried the gravely injured Prince, who had been slowly sinking to the seabed, to the nearest shore. Before she could tend to him, she heard someone approaching, so she hid in the water and watched through the surface as someone else rescued him. Only then had she felt safe enough to return.

"So you were the one who brought me from the seabed to shore. No wonder you seemed a little familiar. Thank you." The Prince looked at the Mermaid Princess with concern, his expression apologetic. "I think you must have misunderstood. You saved me, and Sally saved me too. But I'm sorry—I love Sally, and she's the one I want to marry."

About a year ago, the Prince had been out at sea when he was attacked by a great pirate and fell overboard, disappearing beneath the waves. The King sent most of his people out to search for him. Wizard Allen used his magic to find Prince William, who had washed ashore near a fishing village. The Prince was in terrible condition, and the neighboring kingdom's princess had nursed him continuously, keeping him alive. He had regained consciousness at times during that period and remembered clearly who had saved him. An examination afterward also showed no signs that his memories had been altered.

Once the Prince explained, everything became clear. The rumor that had spread through the kingdom—that he would marry the neighboring kingdom's princess who had saved him—had never been about the Mermaid Princess. She had simply convinced herself it was her. She was just a girl lost in her own romantic fantasies, mixing in far too much of her own wishful thinking. Only when the dreamlike bubble burst did she realize what she had done wrong.

"Love is blind, and love is foolish—especially when it's unrequited." Lu Li thought back to before his own change in outlook, when he had been secretly in love with the class beauty. But once his mindset changed, so many things looked different to him. That class beauty was just an ordinary girl with all sorts of strengths and flaws, not some unreachable goddess. To Lu Li, she had become just another face in the crowd.

"So what do we do now? Crash the wedding? Force them to make it official?" Lu Li asked from the side. The whole scene was so awkward that he could feel his social anxiety kicking in if they stayed any longer.

Meanwhile, at the altar elsewhere, the Witch looked at Xu Haoran, who was restrained upon it. "When we observe things, we judge them through our knowledge, experience, feelings, and beliefs. In truth, the things you see and the things I see are not the same. We all use our own narrow perspectives, like blind men feeling an elephant, to judge the wider world. Unless we're omniscient and omnipotent, everything we perceive deviates from the truth."

"Take me, for example—who I was before and who I am now. Everything about me has changed, inside and out, and so has the way I see things. You're now trapped in a personality that makes everything revolve around me. What you see must be distorted to me as well."

"As you keep changing, you'll discover that everything is changing too." The Witch gave him a knowing smile. "When everything about you has become something else, you become another being, don't you?"

"Would you die for me?" The Witch stepped close to Xu Haoran and asked softly. He answered with a lovestruck look. The next moment, the ritual began. Several objects that had been collected long ago were scattered around the altar. A vast, surging force of magic erupted, and through the altar, it reached out to some unknown presence.

The magical objects scattered around them shone with lights of every color, moving in a mysterious rhythm. The Dream Rift Lu Li had visited before opened in the real world. The two ancient Ghouls guarding its entrance shed their stone forms and opened pairs of crimson eyes. A sound, urgent and plaintive as sobbing, rang out. The Witch spoke to them in the ancient language of wizards and offered up the sacrifice: herself.

According to the earliest origins of wizardry, the Gate of Slumber was meant to balance the realms of dream and reality. For anything that wanted to come out, something had to go in. The Witch's ancestors had entered the gate in ancient times, and not long afterward had sent back a prophecy through some means: When the stars return to their places, from the Dream Realm, offer up a form that is not my own. The shattered bubble will awaken an ancient presence, and the formless servant will usher in the arrival of the ruler.

Just as Lu Li and the others were awkwardly preparing to crash the wedding, the Mermaid Princess pulled out a dagger made of fish bones. She remembered what the Witch had told her that day: changing species was irreversible in most cases, but not absolutely. The Witch had made the dagger from the bone at the end of her tail. If she used it to kill the "cause" of her transformation, she could become a mermaid again.

Looking at the Prince so close to her, the Mermaid Princess shed tears that turned into pearls and fell to the floor. If she killed the Prince, she could change back. Otherwise, where could she go as a human? She had given up too much for him. Taking some of it back and making everything as it had been couldn't be wrong, could it? Even if the Prince was innocent.

"I'm sorry... I can't do it..." The Mermaid Princess cried, then gave a faint smile. She plunged the dagger into her own heart and fell to the ground, her body transforming into that of a mermaid. And with that, the bubble of love burst.