Mermaid Effect 《人鱼效应》 Chinese BL Translation by: 黑猫白袜子

Chapter 8

 "Ka-cha—"

Rand pressed the camera's picture button facing the salad bowl, afterward, he frowned as he looked at the screen. The fish in the photograph is a mass of an indiscernible blob of white light.

Rand couldn't help but look at the salad bowl in front of his eyes and the fish swam as slowly as any normal fish in the world. Next to the brushed stainless steel salad bowl is his mobile phone, a Hasselblad camera (this is a gift from Vincent), which means in addition to the ordinary digital camera he is holding now, he has already tried three ways to capture a photo of this weird fish— and all three methods have failed.

Every photo, hell, truly every single photo that the fish that was photographed in has been covered by a strange blob of white light as if the center of the photos he took had been picked out by someone's fingernails. Rand turned off the flash and tried different focal lengths, but from beginning to end he wasn't able to take a picture of this fish's appearance. He was never a very good photographer, but he also wasn't this terrible. After thinking it over for a moment, Rand finally ascertained the cause: the backlighting on the fish. As the wound of the fish was covered with more and more white film and sealed all the more securely, the luster on the fish also became more and more obvious, it looked as if the gray thing's scales were covered with a mother of pearl sheen. At a few certain angles under the lighting, Rand can see the rainbow-like luster that it emits.

Rand thinks that layer of luster is what caused him to be utterly incapable to take a picture of the fish. He reluctantly put away the camera, then walked back to the computer and shot down a line of characters in the reply box.

My apologies, I can't take a picture of this fish's appearance.

He explained it a bit, but as he expected, the people in this fish enthusiast forum almost entirely took his request for help as gibberish.

Rand is not very familiar with forums or other ways of communicating on the Internet, but when he finished his coffee this morning, he came to the realization that there is no sea in Kansas and this weird fish is a saltwater fish.

At first, Rand just wanted to assist it in returning back, waiting until it's terrible wound got better again and put it back, but now this matter has become complicated. Of course, if he asked Vincent to take a trip back, Vincent wouldn't ask any questions and would get the private plane ready...

Rand shuddered, and he vowed that he would absolutely never want to do it that way.

He found a fish enthusiast forum on the Internet for help, but after he said that the fish survived pretty well in the "saline solution" that was prepared with table sea salt and drinking water, everyone expressed extreme distrust.

Not one fish can do this, just like how no man can survive in a vacuum without any equipment for a whole day... Of course, people can indeed survive in an anaerobic environment for a period of time, a short period of time, nearly ten of seconds or a few minutes, but in the end, they will always die of oxygen deficiency.

The same is true for fish too.

It is absolutely impossible for a real saltwater fish to survive for such a long time in saltwater prepared with a mix of table salt and drinking water.

Only one person tried to get Rand to send a photo to the forum and ID it for him, but this was also declared a lost cause.

Rand was a bit at a loss for what to do. He sat in front of the computer. After a few minutes, his forum post dropped down and no one would pay attention to him again.

Rand ultimately decided to buy a fish tank to bring back first.

In fact, the easiest solution was to kill the fish, but Rand looked at the fish and couldn't forget that he was the one who took it back from the beach.