Wumu was awakened by a rhythmic ka-ka sound. In the dimness, he saw that the cabinet where Song Xu stored food was wide open, a fluffy mass with nearly half its body buried inside. The ka-ka sound was the noise of nut shells being bitten open.
That was Song Xu eating a midnight snack.
It wasn’t the first time she had suddenly woken up in the middle of the night and crawled up to eat. After Wumu had been startled awake by the sound of her gnawing a few days earlier, Song Xu had sworn to him that she was still growing, so if she got hungry at night, she had to eat.
In fact, she had only just reached adulthood not long ago. She was thin and small, and really should eat more.
Wumu quietly closed his eyes again, pretending he hadn’t woken up, but it was already too late. Song Xu seemed to have noticed that he was awake.
“Wumu, you’re awake. Want to eat some midnight snack together?” The terrifying voice sounded.
This familiar voice was the reason Wumu had gained weight during this period of time. He had been an adult for several years already, and his basically fixed body size had actually grown once again.
“If you don’t put on some autumn fat, how will you get through winter, right?” Song Xu had been especially happy lately, because she could finally eat until she was full every day.
In the earlier period, although she wouldn’t starve to death, she had gone hungry quite often, and only occasionally could she eat until stuffed when food was plentiful. The food she usually found was mostly tender leaves, flowers, and grass stems—things that weren’t very filling. While searching around for food, whatever she ate would be digested, and she would quickly feel hungry again.
Before she found food that could be stored and kept for a long time, every morning when she woke up, because there was no ready-made breakfast, she had to be hungry for a while first. Especially late at night—if she woke up halfway, she would get hungry. Now that she had finally achieved food freedom, of course she was adding a midnight snack!
But food is something that tastes better when there’s someone to share it with.
As a beastman, Wumu could eat things other than meat. Since that was the case, she naturally couldn’t ignore him and eat alone.
Thinking that his teeth were structured differently from hers and weren’t suitable for biting nuts, Song Xu even thoughtfully bit open the shells for him. As for accidentally getting a bit of saliva on them in the process, presumably Wumu wouldn’t mind such a small issue.
Under his partner’s enthusiastic recommendations, Wumu would taste a tiny bit of her food—really just a tiny bit. After eating a little, he would refuse Song Xu’s feeding and let her eat by herself, yet he had still gained weight so noticeably.
Song Xu used her hand to measure his body length, extremely surprised. “Your body length seems to have grown more than another meter!”
“Sure enough, you still need a balanced diet. Eat some fruit and nuts to supplement nutrition, only eating meat won’t do. But the difference in our body sizes is getting bigger and bigger.” She didn’t know whether to feel gratified or melancholy.
Putting aside the small matter of putting on autumn fat, Song Xu realized something was wrong with Wumu one day when she touched his tail.
This counted as her routine play—petting the snake, after all, meant using her hands. Not only was she like this, Wumu had also long since gotten used to her brushing his tail back and forth with moss, with animal hide, or with her hands.
Recently, because she had been busy collecting nut shells, she hadn’t gotten hands-on for several days. On this day, she finally filled the stone cave storage. With some free time, Song Xu picked up her daily snake-petting activity again.
But this time, as she touched and touched, the snake tail under her hand started to twitch.
Twitch, twitch—muscles tightening. Song Xu looked at Wumu in surprise and saw him lift his head to look at her as well.
In the silence, a guess suddenly popped into Song Xu’s mind… This reaction—could it be the natural reaction small animals have during breeding season?
She tried touching the snake tail again, and sure enough saw that the long tail twitched slightly.
This was exactly how it looked in the videos of pet snakes in heat that Song Xu had watched before—like lagging.
Generally speaking, snakes go into heat after coming out of hibernation, that is, in spring. But it’s not absolute. Some snakes will also have this happen in autumn, after the peak of summer has passed.
Song Xu held up her hand and stubbornly didn’t dare touch any further. She definitely couldn’t stimulate him right now.
Male snakes during breeding season were usually rather irritable and aggressive. A snake-keeping blogger she used to follow often got bitten at home when their snakes were in heat.
Song Xu carefully called out, “…Wumu?”
Wumu didn’t look irritable, nor was he aggressive. Just like usual, he leaned against the rock, his hand hanging loosely against his body. If it weren’t for the tip of his tail still twitching faintly, his abnormality wouldn’t have been noticed at all.
Song Xu squatted beside him, her expression very strange. Her mood could be described as both curious and afraid. Curiosity didn’t need explaining; as for fear, this rare emotion mainly came from her remembering that snake ones are groove-and-hook shaped, with two little chrysanthemum-like structures……
Watching pet snake videos, she could still laugh and say “cute little baby,” but now, as a snake-type beastman’s legal partner, she could only smile and face life.
Even though she was screaming in her heart that this was scary, save her, the more afraid she was, the stronger her curiosity became. Song Xu’s gaze unconsciously drifted to Wumu’s snake tail.
The knowledge in her mind told her that the position was roughly behind the cloaca. She found it in one go, so those few scales were really hard not to pay attention to!
Wumu had no idea what the cute-looking little squirrel was thinking about. He was already used to this feeling. Ever since leaving the tribe after adulthood, this period would come every year. Just sleep through it.
As usual, he stuck close to his partner to sleep, but Song Xu’s eyes kept drifting downward from time to time. His tail had curled up, and the position was right under her feet.
Song Xu, courting death, stretched out her leg and stepped on it once. The place under her foot wriggled. Song Xu immediately withdrew her foot and pretended to sleep, screaming in her heart that this was thrilling.
Although she still wanted to probe at the edge of death, she vaguely felt a sense of pressure, as if if she did anything more, she would be locked up. So she calmed down, behaved, and fell asleep as if dead.
Song Xu’s eager-to-try attitude and last-minute retreat strategy caused Wumu to suffer quite a bit during this period.
He failed to see through the squirrel’s deliberate, seemingly inadvertent touches and probing. The reactions caused by her various small movements were all attributed by him to physical reasons. After all, the little squirrel just loved to play and fool around a bit—she wouldn’t have any bad intentions.
Song Xu obediently let herself be coiled around. Feeling that Wumu was a little restless, she whispered, “Wumu, are you uncomfortable?”
“Hiss hiss.” Wumu didn’t like to talk, but when he felt his partner needed a response, he would hiss.
“Baby, it’s not that I’m heartless, but this size difference really won’t work. It’ll kill the squirrel.”
Wumu was feeling uncomfortable and didn’t hear clearly what she said. He let out a confused sound and rested his head in front of her to listen.
Song Xu didn’t dare touch his snake tail. Seeing his head right in front of her, she reached out to touch his pitch-black head. The smooth feeling of his hair wasn’t much different from the snake tail—could be used as a substitute.
Sensing that she was touching his head, Wumu lifted his head from in front of her. From Song Xu’s angle, she was instantly struck by his beauty. What kind of pretty-girlfriend perspective was this!
Her mind immediately became unclear, and she changed her words: “Ah, of course. If you insist, it’s not impossible either, just be super careful, please!”
Wumu didn’t move. He quietly treated her like a tree branch to coil around, wrapping especially tightly.
No matter what this half-baked beastman said, Wumu actually wouldn’t do anything. In beastman tribes, beastmen with different beast forms could reproduce because they all had beastman forms.
Half-beastmen were different. They generally didn’t have partners. Even if they did, it was very easy to kill their partner—especially when driven by instinct to possess the other, it was very dangerous. He didn’t want Song Xu to die.
Before he completely became a wild beast, he wanted her to live happily in his forest.
Song Xu twirled the slippery hair while thinking—did Wumu not understand, not know how, or was he incapable?
But her interest was only momentary. Once the twitching reaction of Wumu’s tail faded and the stored food in the stone cave was consumed, she threw herself back into the joyful activity of stockpiling food.
Every day she busied herself picking ripe fruits, collecting nuts that had fallen on the ground, and developing a series of new ways to eat food.
The fruits she picked and peeled of their outer skins and flesh could be dried and stored, buried in the fire to roast, boiled with water, or stir-fried.
This last method had especially big commotion. Shell-on fruits, when heated in the pot, burst open, like firing bullets or slingshotting stones. Hard, shell-covered fruits would jump straight out of the pot and smash outward, or split open in the middle and send the fruit inside popping out.
Originally standing by the pot, Song Xu held her homemade wooden spatula and screamed “ah ah” as she hid in Wumu’s corner, watching fruit pits fly everywhere, smashing against the surrounding stone walls with bang bang sounds.
Wumu was also startled by the explosive noises. Thinking she was frightened because she was close by, he proactively wrapped her up tightly with his snake tail, just like on every thunderstorm night.
But although Song Xu screamed, she actually wasn’t scared at all. Before long, she poked her head out of the “fortress” to look and even laughed. “I’m dying, that pot looks like it’s vomiting, hahaha!”
After laughing, she said in pain, “It spat out my whole pot of fruit. Now it’s everywhere in the cave. I still have to pick them up later!”
After not suffering for long, she found a new angle to comfort herself: “But if you think about it carefully, a lot of the shells have already burst open. That saves me the trouble of peeling them myself, hehe!”
The sounds of shells hitting the ground and stone walls outside stopped. Song Xu stepped over the wall of snake tails piled up like a fortress and picked up scattered fruits all around the stone cave.
Quite a few had fallen beside Wumu’s tail. He moved his tail and got up, about to slither outward. Song Xu hurriedly pressed him back down and clasped her hands in a begging gesture. “Don’t move yet, wait until I finish picking them up. Otherwise, if you sweep like that, I won’t be able to see where these fruits roll to.”
Wumu had no choice but to wait in place. The tip of his tail moved. With a light push, he nudged the fruits that had fallen beside his tail over to Song Xu’s hand.
Song Xu gave him a big smiling face. “Thanks, baby!”
After that one sentence, fruits rolled over to her hand one after another on their own. Song Xu picked up the fruits that rolled to her hand and praised, “Your tail is so flexible, it’s perfect for whipping spinning tops… Do you want to play spinning tops? How about I make you one!”
