"Oh?"
Eva's eyes widened in shock as she looked at Zheng Yang. She hadn't expected him to be around.
Zheng Yang looked at that doll-like girl and couldn't help but flash a gentle, beaming smile at her as he said, "Good evening, Eva."
"Good evening. I remember you. You're Zheng Yang." Eva wore a sweet smile on her cute face.
"Thank you for the fish yesterday. They tasted great!"
Zheng Yang found this comment to be rather odd, as they probably ate all kinds of fish, considering they lived at the harbor. He wondered if Emily usually forbade her daughter from eating fish.
"Oh, Viya said the fish tasted great too. Just what else don't I know about this place," he thought.
He'd caught the fish himself and had been eating them for days, yet he didn't think they were anything special.
However, since Eva liked the fish so much, he saw no point in disagreeing with her and simply bragged instead. "I caught them myself, and there's still a lot of them on my boat. Do you like dried ones or fresh ones?"
Eva pondered for a bit, as if she were recalling the taste, and eventually stuck her tongue out and said, "I like them both, but fresh ones taste better."
Zheng Yang had to admit that Eva's smile was indeed infectious. Anyone who saw her smile would feel compelled to smile themselves.
Eva sat across from Zheng Yang and started chatting with him. "Do you go fishing often?"
"Yeah, I caught two huge tunas this morning. Each of them weighed 50 kilograms, you know."
Zheng Yang excitedly took out his phone and showed her the pictures he'd taken that morning. Then, he started to brag about how he'd wrestled with the fish, making the process sound far more spectacular than it was in the movies, his story drawing a gasp from Eva.
Before they knew it, they were sitting together. As soon as she came out of the kitchen, Emily saw them cradling a phone as they talked about the tunas. Both of them were steeped in their imaginings about the sea. He even told Eva about how tunas couldn't breathe on their own, and what a magnificent sight tuna made when they were out hunting sardines.
Emily was mildly stunned, but she simply looked on without saying a thing so as to not break the warm scene playing out in front of her. She was able to tell that Zheng Yang liked Eva, but in the way a grown-up is fond of a child, without dirty thoughts.
Zheng Yang was more perceptive than Eva and was the first to notice Emily watching them from the side. It was only then that he realized that he was already sitting beside Eva. As such, he quickly rose and went back to his own seat.
Seemingly thinking nothing of it, Eva looked at Emily and asked excitedly, "So, Zheng Yang, when will you take me and mom out to fish?"
Emily's eyebrow twitched. "Eva, mind your manners," she said.
Zheng Yang quickly interjected and said, "It's fine. Eva's a good girl, and I like that about her. If the weather is fine this coming Sunday and both of you have time, I could take you out to sea."
Eva looked at Emily with an expectant look on her face, fearing that her mother would say no.
At that moment, Viya came up to tell Emily that she was going home and politely rejected the offer to stay for dinner. She then said goodbye to the three of them.
After watching Viya go downstairs, Eva turned her gaze back to Emily, waiting for her answer. "Mom?"
Emily's gaze softened. "Sure," she answered. "If the weather is fine the day after tomorrow, we'll visit Zheng Yang on his boat."
She didn't say anything about going out to sea. Instead, she planned to see how things went before making her decision.
About ten minutes later, Emily asked Eva to set the table for dinner.
Even then, Zheng Yang still didn't see Eva's father around.
Both the mother and the daughter didn't act like anyone was missing, making him realize that it was probably normal for it to be just the two of them.
The chum salmon was grilled very nicely, but Zheng Yang still didn't see what was so different about it even after eating several pieces.
Eva continued to yap about the two tunas that Zheng Yang had caught that morning, while also raving about how good the fish she was munching on tasted.
Seeing how Emily seemed to be enjoying the fish too, Zheng Yang started to wonder if something was wrong with his taste buds.
While they ate dinner, he couldn't help but ask, "Emily, what makes this fish different from the ones you usually buy? Why can't I tell the difference?"
Both mother and daughter stopped eating and cast puzzled looks at Zheng Yang.
"Don't you think that the fish you caught tastes better?" Emily asked.
Eva nodded away like a woodpecker.
"Do they?" he thought.
Zheng Yang then ate another piece and thought that it tasted just like any other fish he'd eaten. He even began to recall that unforgettable putrid stench of that fish monster he saw in that ghost ship dream.
"That's it!" He came to a sudden epiphany, realizing what the problem was.
That dream had affected him so much that he'd developed an aversion to fish. Yet, he had been forcing himself to eat fish, all the same, causing the fish to taste no different from the other fish he'd been eating. Or rather, when he ate the fish, his mind just blocked out the taste and substituted it with the memory of the taste of fish he'd eaten in the past as a way to protect him from the trauma.
"D*mn, I'm having psychological issues here!
"So, that means that the fish I caught are actually delicious, then?
Conventional logic had it that the fish sold in the harbor were all from that region of the ocean, so they shouldn't be all that different in texture. As such, he wondered why the fish he caught were so noticeably different from the ones you could buy on the market.
The only explanation he could come up with was that the fish he caught had been kept alive in the fish hold for days, and the spirit vessel was capable of altering the fish's texture, making them taste better.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt this was the only explanation.
It was a pity that he had psychological issues when it came to fish, meaning that he wouldn't be able to enjoy their taste unless he was cured.
"Well, maybe I got too used to them to notice the difference," he explained, chuckling awkwardly.
After dinner, he listened to Eva's stories about her school for a while before leaving the clinic.
He returned to his boat and looked up information about the Arcane Coven online, and he actually managed to find a forum dedicated specifically to the coven.
However, the coven that he found claimed to the outside world that they were a group of aficionados of the mysterious and the occult. The forum was filled with posts about exploring eerie places, attempts at cultic rituals, and weird happenings. One could easily tell that it was a group of outsiders talking about things that they didn't actually know.
"You're not telling me that this Arcane Coven is the one that Emily told me about," he thought.
After thinking things over for a bit, he came to the conclusion that the two were likely linked, and the one open to the public online was just a front. The ones in the know knew it for what it truly was, while the ones who weren't in the know simply thought it consisted of a bunch of idiots who were fond of the occult.
As a veteran keyboard warrior, he created an account right away and named himself "Ricky who likes acting cool." His profile picture was an image of a monkey wearing sunglasses.
Everything you do on the web leaves a trace. If they wanted to, tech experts could easily pinpoint someone who had even just logged in on a certain website, let alone someone who created an account. As such, he didn't care about the privacy of his account and made use of Ricky like he thought nothing of it.
He believed that no one would come looking for him, so long as he made it a point to not stand out too much.
However, what baffled him was the three questions that popped up as soon as he successfully created an account, striking him to the core.
Do you know of the occult?
Have you had any paranormal/supernatural phenomenon?
Are you out to learn about the true side of the occult?
…