Chapter 26: Uo’s Story

"As you all know, I went to the palace at night to see the king. Since I knew the guards wouldn't let me in, I swam in through the window when the guards weren't looking. Strangely, I didn't run into any guards in the palace."

"Yeah, now that I think about it, there weren't any guards anywhere," Yuri mused, trying to come up with a reason for that.

"When I got to the doors to the throne room, I once again noticed the strange lack of guards. I swam over and tentatively opened the door. When I poked my head in, nobody was there. Confused, I swam into the room and looked for the king, but there wasn't any trace of him to be found. Finally, someone spoke. I turned to see Same, the king's advisor. I always thought he was a nice guy, until now."

Uo paused before continuing. I could tell it was hard for him to relive this.

"Same said to me, 'What are you doing here? You should not be here! The king is not well!' I asked him what was wrong with the king when Same suddenly swam over to me and stabbed me with a knife he had hidden in his shirt," Uo shivered, reliving the awful moment. "When I fell to the ground, Same cackled, saying that the king was dead so he was the secret ruler of the merpeople. Apparently, Same had killed the king before we even left Kaiyo! What I don't understand is how he has managed to keep this a secret from everyone! It's awful! We've got to stop him! Who knows what he'll do! He already has killed the king! Who will be next?!"

Uo was panicking. His heart and breathing monitors went off, causing the doctor and the nurse to swim in.

"You all should leave. Whatever it is you all talked about caused him to have a panic attack. If this keeps up, his condition could worsen. I'm going to have to give him some anesthesia to stabilize him," the doctor said urgently, pushing us out of the room.

We reluctantly left. Everyone felt more than a little guilty for pushing Uo like that. Still, we had to know what had happened to him. How could Same kill and replace the king without anyone noticing? It made no sense. Surely someone would have noticed.

"Are you ok, Hana?" Yuri asked, disrupting my train of thought.

"Yeah. I was just wondering how Same could have replaced the king so easily. You would think someone would notice."

"That's probably the reason why there were so few guards. Same probably killed off the ones that tried to rebel and blackmailed the others into obeying him."

I had thought about that, but I didn't want to be the one to say it. We all sat in the waiting room, thinking about the next step. Finally, I drifted off into an uneasy sleep.