A woman from Japan ate a mermaid.
She didn’t know it at the time. Her father was a fisherman, and the sea had always given them strange things.
That night, he brought home meat he said was rare, caught deep beyond the coastal rocks. He warned her not to eat too much. She didn’t listen.
It was sweet. Soft. Almost human.
That was the last time she ever aged.
She was 15 then. By 30, her neighbors noticed. No wrinkles. No change. No decay.
By 50, her friends were gone. By 80, her siblings were buried.
But she still looked 15.
She moved. Again and again. Changing names, cutting ties, hiding from questions.
She fell in love once. He died in his sleep when they were both in their 60s. She still looked like a girl.
She tried to have children. Miscarriages. Stillbirths. The doctors were baffled. She stopped trying.
She begged the sea to take it back. Threw herself into storms. Starved herself. Prayed. Cursed.
But immortality isn’t a gift. It’s a silence that outlives every voice you love.
So she climbed a mountain.
Became a nun in a small temple. Swept leaves. Chanted mantras. Grew herbs. Watched centuries pass.
Villagers would whisper about the eternally young woman who lived alone in the mist.
Some say she lived 800 years.
Others say she’s still there, hidden behind temple walls, her eyes heavy with lifetimes no one will ever understand.
When she finally disappeared, all that was found were her robes and an empty bowl of salted rice.
No bones. No body. No goodbye.
Just wind.
And the warning still told in coastal towns:
Never eat what you don’t understand. Some flesh feeds your hunger.
Some binds you to time forever.
And the sea doesn’t trade blessings without cost.