The mermaid princess and his Host were released from the holding cell the following morning. His Host had made up a story of how they had been caught up in a shipwreck and lost their clothes to the fish. Despite the very obvious lies in the story, it was accepted due to their beauty. While they now looked human, they were still far more attractive than the average women.

After they were released from the cell and had left the building, the reality of the situation finally set it. They had no money, no clothes, no human skills, no home and no family to depend on. They had also lost the strength being mermaids gave them.

Essentially, they had become easy prey.

Showcasing that she wasn't an absolute fool like his last Host, his Host started inquiring anybody she met if they knew any place that would hire them. Most people recommended the brothels.

One of them though, remarked that the castle might be hiring more maids. Looking like all of their problems had been solved, his Host and the mermaid princess immediately set off to find it. The fact that neither of them knew what maids actually did, didn't seem to bother them much.

Ira watched on with amusement as they finally arried at the castle gates, both of them panting and trembling from sheer exhaustion. This was, after all, the first time those legs were ever used.

Naturally, they weren't up to the task of walking for two hours up a hill.

Ira got some weird looks from the people that saw him giggling to himself.

With the amusement giving him energy, he automatically went about his job in the laziest manner possible, not that anybody could tell, because they very much didn't care about him. In his mind, he could see as his Host and the mermaid princess were taken to the Head Maid's office in another wing apart from Ira. He could tell that the mermaid looked down on the stern old woman that met her sight from the moment she saw her. And the Head Maid could see it too.

Knowing absolutely nothing about human customs and social rules, the only thing that saved the mermaid princess from being thrown out on her ass was the fact that his Host was doing all of the talking.

Even then, it was plainly visible on her face that she hated the fact that they had to literally beg for a job. Which was really only to be expected, given that they had no useful skills at all.

While Ira was whistling to himself in a genuinly good mood, his Host was trying desperately to prevent the mermaid princess from murdering their new employer.

Quite a lot of people saw him laughing to himself.

With the mermaid princess working in the castle, the plot of the story had officially begun. Through a serious of non-coincidences, she met up with the Captain on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, without the ability to speak, the only thing to catch his attention was her beauty, and that wasn't enough for him to betray his supposed savior. And she couldn't tell him that she had been the one to save him.

His Host could tell him the truth, but evidently, this occured to nobody.

Ira wasn't surprised.

Meanwhile, down deep below the ocean's surface, the Sea Witch followed a string of  magic towards the shore on which the castle dwelled. Ira assumed it was because they wanted to observe as the mermaid princess failed.

Seeing the Sea Witch approaching the shore gave Ira an odd feeling in his chest. It was a mix between the simple joy he felt when his Hosts were miserable, and the comfort he had felt in the cave before he switched body's. It brought forth to mind the simplicity of being in Silas' company, for some strange reason. Ira didn't understand it, so he gave it no further thought. Perhaps, though, when the merman arrived, he would go greet him if he could?

It would be sort of nice to see him again.

As Ira didn't care about his duties, he went about business the same manner as usual, even with his Host in the same building. He sneaked into the royal library to read during his work hours and sneaked out the books he especially liked to take back to his quarters. As a servant, he lived in the dorms for the male servants in the castle. He had to share his room with another man, but he had it covered. The guy no longer dared to touch Ira's things.

He could also no longer see out of one of his eyes, but really, that was just a coincidence. Ira had had nothing to do with it.

Honestly.

It was a full three weeks after having started working at the castle that the mermaid princess began her attempts to murder the noble girl.

This was, as could easily be guessed, due to her jealousy.

However, regardless of the reason why, the fact was that she was trying to kill the woman the crown prince of the nation was currently courting. This could be seen as a sign of treason.

Luckily, she was the protagonist of the story and thus didn't need to follow the law, because nobody figured out it was her doing. They were always too destracted by her beauty. Because of this, another servant girl was blamed for it all and, two months after the mermaid princess left the sea, she was executed for her supposed crimes.

Thankfully, the people of this nation considered themselves to be very humane, so they kept the guillotine's blade sharp. It was a very quick death.

Much, much better then some other unfortunate botched executions he had witnessed in his time. Some of them very hilarious.

When was the last time you saw a guy starving to death after having been hung? Or people panic when the fire didn't start as they were burning a witch at the stake, because some idiot hadn't checked to see if the straw was actually dry?

Yeah, Ira had seen some weird things in his many years of life.

As was to be expected, when her attempts to get closer to the prince failed, the mermaid princess only got more and more furious. Her duties in the castle went unfulfilled as she didn't see the point in them, and her attention was more focused on following the prince around, waiting for a good moment to "accidentally" bump into him.

Like anybody was going to believe that.

The Queen of the nation, that is, the prince's mother, was no stranger to servant girls trying to get the prince's attention and did what she always did in such situations. She sent her son to sea on navy duty while she set about to find something to fire the girl for. This did not require much effort.

Just a few months after the mermaid princess had gone to land, she was fired from her job. Thankfully, she was in the company of his Host, who proved to actually have brains when she managed to get the mermaid princess another job in castle. To be precise, she would be cleaning the horse stalls. 

Ira actually paid her a visit while she was there, not that she even noticed him, and had a good laugh about it.

The Sea Witch found himself at the edge of the land upon which his Host and the mermaid princess currently dwelled without any trouble at all. Ira tended to observe him when he was bored and nothing else interesting was happening. From what he could see, the Sea Witch had found a cave to hang out in and had no intention of going anywhere else. the urge to visit, oddly enough, kept on growing.

Half-a-year since the mermaid princess first took her steps on land, Ira finally decided that he was going to find out what this odd feeling was and went to visit the Sea Witch. After dropping a bucket of water on top of the mermaid princess, because why not?

She made an absolutely hilarious face.

The cave wasn't hard to find, although it was a pain to get to the entrance from land. thankfully it didn't require swimming skills or Ira would have given up then and there.

As it was, it still took him a lot of awkward climbing and walking through water until he was finally inside it. Ira sharpened his vision in response to the darkness and ventured deeper still. A feeling of anticipation was burning in his stomach and he didn't know why.

Ira had read numerous yaoi manga (that was apparently what it was called) during his time between the missions. He had tried his best to study them seriously, but then he got pulled into great stories like Ten Count and Honto Yajuu, and things kind of devolved from there. Regardless, he now had theoretical knowledge of how male same-sex relationships worked. Still, he was unsure how this corresponded to reality and so felt the need to try it out. Not actually sex, because the idea was kind of gross, but other stuff.

Like the stuff he had done with Silas. He still had to test if it only felt like that with Silas.

Ira was actually entertaining the idea of taking a mission in a BL world one of these days. It could be fun. He hadn't before because he hadn't understood what BL stood for, but now that he did, the idea got more attractive the more he pondered at it.

But it'd have to wait until he got a male a Host. Or could he stick a female Host in a male body? A thought worth investigating.

He exited the tunnel to find himself in an open space with a fairly low ceiling that he had seen plenty of times when he was spying on the Sea Witch. Magical lights were hanging from the ceiling, lighting up the otherwise entirely dark room and Ira watched it all with wide eyes. It was beautiful.

He thought that maybe he felt his heart skip a beat, but didn't dwell on it. It didn't mean anything.

The Sea Witch that Ira had found himself oddly attached too, sat in the middle of the cave, the gleaming tail disappearing down into the clear waters. Ira edged closer without any regard for personal safety, because frankly, he didn't care. The lights from the ceiling were glittering on the tail and it looked utterly fascinating.

He seamlessly took a picture of it in his mind and saved it. Who knew what use it would come to have.

The Sea Witch caught sight of him when he approached rather fearlessly, and he saw the moment that he realized there was a human in the cave with him. 

In the interest of communication — because he wanted to take more pictures, and that would be a little bit more difficult if he was dead — Ira kept the ability to understand the merpeople's language on. He walked up on dry land and bent down as he came too close to the ceiling. 

He didn't want to disturb those pretty lights.

Once he half-stood in front of the merman, Ira searched his head for something to say and came up with the genius phrase of, "Hey."

He deserved an award or something.

While Ira was currently dying inside from sheer embarrassment, the merman moved closer to Ira as well. Ira had the feeling of magic searching through him and absentmindedly batted it away. This, for some reason, made the merman's eyes widen and he crawled even closer. 

"You are back." 

Ira tilted his head a little in confusion. What was the merman talking about now? This was what happened when you went years without communicating with anyone.

He took a wild guess and said, "Yes."

Should he sign up for some kind of class or something to improve his communication skills? That was a thing, right? He felt like he should.

But it sounded so boring.

And some of the best entertainment arose from misunderstandings.

The merman took a hold of his wrist and pulled him down until Ira was sitting right next to him. By this point, Ira had already taken about two dozen pictures in his mind.

Well, a few more dozen pictures wouldn't hurt.