Whenever Jiang Xiaoya came running excitedly with a shiny hair clip held up high, wanting to braid its hair, the swamp monster would whoosh and instantly shorten its hair, leaving the little dog holding the hair clip with nowhere to start!
But when walking home at night, it would quietly turn its hair back to its original length. That way, Jiang Xiaoya could hold onto a strand of hair and sway slowly back home, just like when she was little.
But for Jiang Xiaoya, there were some things that simply wouldn’t do with short hair.
For example, good night kisses.
Meeting the youth’s eyes, under that smiling, moonlight-like gaze, the little dog just couldn’t bring herself to kiss him. Clearly he looked so fierce, with snake-like vertical pupils for eyes, yet when he looked at her, he was so gentle. She would turn into a little dog snack melted by moonlight.
The good night kiss that should have been as natural as breathing or drinking water suddenly became unfamiliar.
No kissing, no kissing!
Although the excuse was that it was because of the short hair, in reality, she had begun to refuse most intimate interactions.
She no longer wanted to be picked up and lifted high by the swamp monster.
She also didn’t want to sit in that big embrace anymore. The grassy scent lingering at her nose made her feel restless, and she would dart away like lightning, just like a little dog.
The little dog wanted to run out to roll around in the grass and chase butterflies! She wanted to jump up and down, climb trees and leap into rivers—she didn’t want to stay in that embrace, letting her heart croak like there was a frog stuffed inside it.
She had to leave that grassy-scented embrace before the frog in her heart would shut its mouth.
One weekend after school, on her way home, she smelled the tempting aroma of fish soup from far away and ran back excitedly—only to trip over the rabbit trap set by the front door! She liked eating spicy rabbit meat, so the swamp monster had learned to make many traps, but to this day it still hadn’t caught many rabbits. Instead, it had harmed Jiang Xiaoya.
She fell badly, scraping her knee open with a big gash, blood beads welling up nonstop. Yet when it came time to apply medicine, she refused to let Mom do it. Why? Probably because she would have to roll her pants up and place her leg in the youth’s palm. Such a natural thing when she was little—but now, she limped her way inside, preferring to slap together a careless bandage herself rather than let Mom help.
It could only sit outside and ask her, “Xiaoya, can you use the iodine yourself? The gauze at the side…”
She brushed it off perfunctorily, wrapped it a few rough turns, then hopped off to see Ah Hua. A little dog full of energy lacked patience; she had too many things she wanted to do—how could she possibly treat it seriously? As a result, the gauze at the edge of the wound hung down loose and slack.
She was careless, but the swamp monster could not be.
Ever since she’d nearly died from an allergic reaction, it had become sensitive and suspicious, always worried that Jiang Xiaoya might suddenly croak and die with a snap.
That night, it sat by the little dog’s bed and removed the messy layers of gauze from her knee. Sure enough, the edges of the wound had started to fester.
The youth frowned and rebandaged it carefully.
Even though the movements were gentle, she still woke up. Her groggy, half-asleep mind reacted by trying to kick Mom away, but the youth grabbed her calf in one motion, pressed it against himself, and continued bandaging without a word.
After finishing, it asked whether she was sulking with it.
“Xiaoya, did Mom do something wrong?”
“Mom, I’ve grown up—you doing this makes me embarrassed!”
How strange. The year before last, Jiang Xiaoya rolled around in the swamp without embarrassment. Last year, she squatted under the bed stealing ice cream without embarrassment, and even shouted about wanting to jump into a manure pit without embarrassment. And this year, she was actually embarrassed.
The swamp monster leaned in to take a look, studying her as if it had discovered a new continent. Fine then. As her mom, it could only take care of a child’s fragile self-esteem.
The youth released her and calmly taught her how to change the dressing and disinfect it tomorrow.
“Baby, did you understand?”
She nodded perfunctorily and burrowed into the blanket. Oh no—there was already a grassy smell in the blanket. How was she supposed to sleep like this!
───♡───
Jiang Xiaoya was preparing for the entrance exam to the Combat Department’s preparatory class, so she could go straight into the high school combat class without waiting for assignment. She went to release Ah Hua less and less, and no longer had time to play with butterflies. Aside from doing homework, she was practicing her spiritual body.
Every morning, she held a piece of bread in her mouth and hurried off, and when she came home at night, she ate a few quick bites before getting busy again.
The swamp monster was actually the kind of parent who spoiled their child a little. The swamp monster was not human; it couldn’t understand the human parents’ idea of hoping their child would become a dragon. It was already strong enough, and it strove to become even stronger precisely so Jiang Xiaoya could live off it.
More than once, it had wanted to ask her—was it really necessary to take that preparatory class? Mom could raise her for her entire life.
But the youth never said such things out loud. In the end, it simply watched its baby work hard in silence. Because likewise, it was not human; it would not, like humans, always try to change others.
Just like how a water ghost wants to eat people—no matter how you persuade it, it still wants to eat. How can one’s nature be changed? So the youth did not offer its own advice. It only helped prepare her breakfast and took care of many small matters in daily life for her. For example, packing her schoolbag, washing clothes and shoes. Anyway, it was all things it was already used to doing.
After successfully getting into the preparatory class, Jiang Xiaoya finally breathed a sigh of relief and ran home excitedly to tell Mom. However, just as she reached the doorway, she froze—
The youth was by the sink, calm in the same way it was when washing all her clothes, scrubbing that tiny triangular piece of cloth. Slender fingers wrung out the water, shook it open, then clipped it onto the hanger.
The little dog’s mind went boom, almost bursting out actual steam from the top of her head. Like a screaming kettle of boiling water, she charged over and rammed it with her head. “Jiang Ze!”
The two of them had a huge fight. Jiang Xiaoya rushed into her room and refused to come out.
She wasn’t a little child anymore. She was a grown girl now. How could it still wash her underwear!
It was angry too—she had called it Jiang Ze. No sense of respect at all.
And it didn’t like that name. At the very least, she should call it—Jiang Daya!
The swamp monster looked at the little underpants hanging by the window, its inhuman vertical pupils full of confusion. When Jiang Xiaoya was little, the family didn’t even have a washing machine; it had always taken her clothes to the lakeside to wash them, and it had washed all of the child’s drool bibs too. And now she was actually getting angry at it.
The more it thought about it, the angrier it became. A dangerous hissing sound came from its throat, sharp canine teeth faintly visible—
The swamp monster was about to bare its fangs, about to bite Jiang Xiaoya to death!
But she didn’t come out to eat for the entire night, as if she planned to lock herself in her room forever.
The swamp monster sneered: let her starve to death!
Ten o’clock at night.
One in the morning.
Alright, alright, this was just a child’s self-esteem acting up. How could she not eat?
It went to knock on the door. The huge creature squatted at the doorway. “Xiaoya, Mom was wrong.”
The little dog opened the door, her back to it, refusing to look at it. She said her privacy had to be respected—for example, private things like underwear and bras were not allowed to be touched, and it also wasn’t allowed to sneak a look at her diary anymore.
Alright, alright.
Everything Jiang Xiaoya said was right.
So… can we eat now, baby?
───♡───
She got into the preparatory class! But Jiang Xiaoya wasn’t as happy as she had imagined. In the year she turned fifteen, the summer weather was extremely bad. Probably because of some cyclone in the Pacific Ocean, rainfall had been scarce for two whole months. The swamp began to crack slightly, and the moss started to wither.
When Jiang Xiaoya heard the high-temperature warning, she hurried home.
Fortunately, there was a big swamp and pond at home, so the swamp monster’s parched skin hadn’t cracked yet. However, the dry air made it almost impossible for the massive creature to breathe, and it could only curl up in the swamp at home, briefly falling into a dormant state.
Jiang Xiaoya knew that Mom would go dormant under the sun and in winter. Hearing the steady sound of a heartbeat, she let out a sigh of relief—but the little dog was still very worried about Mom. She soaked all the towels in the house and hung them beside Mom, trying to increase the humidity in the air.
But the high temperature made the water evaporate too quickly. In less than half an hour, the towels she had just hung up became dry and stiff.
She needed to buy a humidifier. But after the apocalypse, everyone knew that high air humidity would make water ghosts active, and such completely useless products had long been eliminated. From morning until night she asked around, and Jiang Xiaoya, gaining nothing, walked down the street with heavy steps.
Mom could always bring anything home—trendy dresses, snacks she suddenly felt like eating… but now, it was just a humidifier. Why was it so hard to find?
By the time the mall was about to close, the desperate little dog finally dug out an old, worn humidifier from a pile of junk in a general store.
The little dog, drenched in sweat, sat on the floor and laughed.
She hugged the humidifier and ran home. She had never been so happy before.
Hehe, Mom—Xiaoya is very useful too.
This was the first time in Jiang Xiaoya’s life that she faced living on her own.
Before, Mom had always used his huge body to block all the difficulties outside, so in Jiang Xiaoya’s eyes, life was fragrant braised prawns in oil, grass in the swamp where she could roll around freely, and the path home from school with Ah Hua. Happy and free.
But after living independently, she finally realized—so there were so many winds and rains outside.
The refrigerator at home made ice nonstop for twenty-four hours. As soon as school was over, the little dog had to go to the base to buy large amounts of water, ask someone to deliver it outside the base, then call Ah Hua to carry it home together. Sometimes she couldn’t buy enough water and had to run to many different places.
So tiring—she discovered for the first time that the road from the base to home was so far.
Mom hadn’t had time to prepare food before falling into dormancy. This was also the first time Jiang Xiaoya had ever worried about eating.
She went to the market alone. Vegetables that cost fifty cents were sold to her for five yuan. The little dog angrily ran back to argue and snatched back her four yuan and fifty cents!
She tried cooking for the first time by herself. She put too much oil in the dish, and the rice burned to the bottom of the pot.
Xiaoya leaned against Ah Hua, eating the burnt rice.
“Ah Hua, I miss Mom.”
During the school term, there really wasn’t time to cook, so Jiang Xiaoya bought a lot of rice balls and brought them home. When she got hungry, she would thaw one and eat it. The taste was strange, and there was even a bit of flavor mixing.
But the hardest thing to endure wasn’t the bad-tasting food. It was that late at night, when everything was quiet, she would hear the massive creature curled up in the swamp at home, making faint sounds in the dry air—like a beast groaning in pain. The dryness was like small knives cutting at her mom.
The little dog’s heart hurt terribly. She ran over again and again, using towels soaked in cold water, trying to make Mom feel a little better. She rubbed her face against Mom, trying to feel his body temperature. Like that, she stayed by his side the entire night.
The swamp at night was really quiet. They lived at the center of this vast swamp, like an isolated island abandoned by the world. She no longer said things about whether she had grown up or not; those childish quarrels felt like something from a previous life.
She curled up like a little dog in Mom’s embrace, wrapped in long hair, trying to find a bit of safety in the youth’s arms.
Mom, Xiaoya misses you.
Days passed one by one, and it had been nearly a month since Mom fell asleep.
Jiang Xiaoya had never realized before that just buying groceries, cooking, and taking care of Ah Hua could be this exhausting. And that a person had to worry about so many things: Mom, Ah Hua, what to eat tomorrow. She was fifteen this year, but Mom had never let her worry about anything at all.
In the past, the little dog only needed to run around in the swamp playing with water, soaking herself all over, then shaking her fur like a whirlwind. Butterflies, Ah Hua, kites—those were the joys that belonged to a little dog.
There had never been a moment when she truly realized that those carefree days were about to pass. But she didn’t feel much reluctance—she only urgently wanted to grow up, to become stronger, stronger still. If only she could solve everything and make Mom stop hurting.
Perhaps because the rainfall had decreased, human society finally had a chance to catch its breath. Taking advantage of this opportunity, many forces rose up. The television broadcast the news: Tiandong Base had joined the newly established Federation, becoming one of its members and was about to receive material support. The people on the streets were full of joy, but Xiaoya’s steps grew heavier and heavier.
The little dog who used to run wild in the swamp every day seemed to grow up overnight. She looked at the bustling crowd, ran over, and went to buy water and call a car all by herself. She looked at the brightly shining sky and realized that maybe she didn’t like sunlight that much after all—she just liked the rainbow refracted above Mom’s head.
She no longer cared much about the outside world, and even lost interest in better lives for butterflies and kites. She only wanted to guard her home and Mom.
And so, Xiaoya prayed every day for heavy rain.
On the day summer vacation began, everyone went off to the park in groups. The little dog went home alone. She had water delivered to the outside of the swamp, and also went to the supermarket to buy cooling patches, towels, and a whole pile of ingredients. Big and small bags filled her backpack, and her hands were full as well.
The pile of things was almost crushing the little dog’s shoulders. She struggled to carry everything home. Halfway there, it suddenly started to rain.
At first it was one drop, two drops, then suddenly a torrential downpour.
The little dog lifted her head in delight and immediately wanted to rush home, anxiously wanting to know whether Mom would wake up as soon as it rained.
But the rain kept getting heavier. Without an umbrella, with mud everywhere, each step grew heavier and heavier. Life always had moments like this—heavy plastic bags, soaked hair and outer clothes, muddy streets… She wanted to run faster to see Mom, but the rain was too heavy.
Her steps were so heavy, carrying all those bags. She had never been this bedraggled before—like a little dog that had fallen into a mud pit.
But as she walked on, she felt the rain stop.
Stunned, Jiang Xiaoya lifted her head.
Above her was the familiar, long hair of the swamp monster, sheltering little Xiaoya beneath it.
