The Mermaid I Met by Getting Fired is a completed Chinese GL manhua in 21 sections, officially licensed in English on Baiheverse. An office worker loses her job, gets sent on a seaside tour and meets a pink-haired stranger who hands her a can of Coke from the water.
Whether she has a tail is the easy question. Falling for the woman who actually shows up is harder.
Every clue should settle the question. Somehow none of them do.
“A mermaid’s handing me Coke?!”
Ari first appears with pink hair and a tail, holding a can of Coke up to a miserable tourist. She has even opened it for her. Then she is gone, and all that’s left is the can.
“But I love fairy tales about mermaids, and I love mermaids!”
She knows how it sounds. But after twenty-plus job applications and parents who didn’t want her rotting at home, a mermaid is the most interesting thing to happen to her in a long time, and she is not letting go of it easily.
For anyone whose job has ever swallowed their whole life. A holiday doesn’t switch that off, and her third day at the beach shows it.
BeforeAt home
Her job was how she proved she was useful. After the layoff her days fell apart, and her parents, who didn’t want her rotting at home, sent her on a seaside tour.
Day 3On the beach
Two days after the Coke, on the tour’s free time, she is still checking her phone: more than twenty applications, no good news, and every idle hour counted as falling behind.
Day 3In the sea
She is scared of the water and bad at having fun. Everyone else on the tour is trying something; she bobs in a life jacket, the only one too afraid to do anything.
Day 3Back on the water
Ari surfaces with a pink starfish, and for the first time all trip, an empty afternoon is fun.
That night she makes a plan: “I’ll go look for her again tomorrow!”
Before Ari says a word, she has already been cast: beautiful, silent, almost unreal. Then she speaks, in a low, raspy voice she apologises for, and comes back to finish a conversation she couldn’t fully hear. She turns out funnier, blunter and much harder to forget than anything in the fairy tale.
| The mermaid she pictured | Point | Ari |
|---|---|---|
| In the sea, tail and all | On a rented jet ski | |
| Sings pretty songs forever | “Sorry, my voice isn’t pretty.” | |
| A princess to protect | “Don’t give up on yourself that easily.” |
The word, in the story
She calls Ari “the mermaid” from the first page. Pick a numbered phrase to see what the word turns into in The Mermaid I Met by Getting Fired.
A word that starts as a miracle at sea1, turns into a crush she won’t say out loud2 and settles into her name for one person3.
1Pink hair, a tail and a hand holding out a Coke. The first sighting is impossible and very specific, and she wants it to be true.
2That night she lies awake replaying the day, and the mermaid she can’t stop thinking about is suddenly very specific: the laugh, the starfish, a smell she swears doesn’t exist in the city. She still calls it curiosity.
3“My mermaid” starts as something she only says in her head. Before long it is simply what she calls Ari.
What people type in when they are looking for this comic.
Searched: “the mermaid i met by getting fired”
On Baiheverse, in the official English edition. The Mermaid I Met by Getting Fired is complete at 21 sections and free to start: Chapter 1 costs nothing, and later sections unlock on the site.
Searched: “after losing my job, i met miss mermaid at the beach”
Yes. That title is a word-for-word translation of the Chinese one, 失业后我在海边遇见了人鱼小姐 (Shīyè hòu wǒ zài hǎibiān yùjiànle rényú xiǎojiě). In official English it is called The Mermaid I Met by Getting Fired, and all 21 sections are on Baiheverse. Chapter 1 is free.
Searched: “the mermaid i met by getting fired manga”
Yes, on Baiheverse. It is a Chinese manhua rather than a Japanese manga, drawn in full color and read by scrolling down the page. Start with Chapter 1.
Searched: “manhua mermaid”
This one: a completed mermaid yuri romance between two adult women, an office worker who has just lost her job and Ari, the pink-haired stranger she meets at sea. Chapter 1 is free.
Before you start
The pink-haired stranger from the sea. She is blunt, funny and hard to fluster, with a low, raspy voice and hearing loss that the story treats as part of who she is, never as a problem to fix. Meet her in Chapter 1.
It starts that way. The opening is light, but later sections touch on suicidal thoughts and sexual harassment. See all 21 sections before you start.
