"Why have you come?" Serune asked.
She was still half submerged in the water, with only the upper half of her body visible above the surface. Her long hair was slightly damp from being underwater, and she looked at me with a curious expression, almost as though she couldn't figure out why I had suddenly decided to visit her.
"Well, I'm planning to go to the mermaid kingdom," I told her. "Considering that you're a princess there, I think it would benefit me if you came along with us. Besides, you've been holed up in this facility for months now. Don't you want to go home as well?"
"To the mermaid kingdom?" she asked, sounding surprised by the suggestion. "W-Well, I would like to, but..."
For some reason, a little sadness suddenly appeared in her eyes after I mentioned that she could return to the place where she was actually a princess. Her expression changed almost immediately, and she looked like she had something else she wanted to say but couldn't quite bring herself to ask.
