The snow had not completely melted yet, and the forest nights were still very cold. Song Xu changed into her beast form, used fallen leaves to cover her legs, and lay with most of her body—including her tail—on top of the big snake’s head, like a small blanket covering him.

When she slept hazily and felt cold, she would crawl up to add firewood, and at the same time push the snake, making him twist his body and turn over, so he wouldn’t roast on only one side.

If only one side was roasted… then snake-snake would only be cooked on one side, half-raw.

A cool, cold snake-snake who couldn’t generate heat on his own was not a good bed companion in winter. Song Xu shivered in the middle of the night, a little regretful that she had left home so early.

The last time Uncle Weishan came, she had beaten around the bush and learned when they would come to check on Wumu’s situation. Uncle had also said he would try his best to delay things, but she was worried that the beastmen would not care about martial ethics and might strike them by surprise ahead of time, so she decided to not care about martial ethics first and brought Wumu to slip away early.

She told Uncle that she would take good care of beast-transformed Wumu, but then turned around and took him out of the house.

It was just that they slipped away too early. Traveling in this kind of weather was truly torturous.

“Wumu, tomorrow let’s still find a cave to sleep in, at least it can block the wind.” The little squirrel sneezed.

Snake-snake raised his head, then lowered it again. A snake face with few movements, looking just like he was in low spirits. The snake at home was suspected to be depressed? That wouldn’t do!

Mouse-mouse stood up. “Haven’t watched dancing in a long time, want me to dance one for you?”

She happened to be too cold to sleep, so she got up to move around. The squirrel danced wildly beside the fire for a while, and even did half a set of calisthenics, only to find that snake-snake was staring at her without moving.

Song Xu thought, this is bad. In the past, when snake-snake saw her jumping around in front of him, he couldn’t help opening his mouth. Now he didn’t even open his mouth. Obviously, the situation was serious.

The squirrel squatted beside the big snake’s head with her hands on her hips and stroked the scales on his snout. “Baby, we weren’t driven out by your tribe, and we didn’t leave home to escape for our lives. Remember, we came out to travel, so you must be a little happier.”

Being treated as an outcast by his companions—if Wumu still had rationality and could think, he would definitely feel sad about this, right?

Uncle Weishan had said that after Wumu became an adult, he had already come out to live alone for several years. Normally, he should have long moved toward a dangerous edge. After reaching adulthood, demi-beastmen would all be more inclined to maintain beast form, because that made them more comfortable, but Wumu spent most of his time trying hard to maintain a demi-beastman form.

“Being treated as a freak by others, I also understand that feeling. My classmates all think I’m a weirdo… but I’m not the same as you. I’m not sad at all. Do you know why? Because I am the chosen one. Chosen ones are just different from others!”

Chuunibyou¹Chuunibyou — A Japanese slang term meaning “eighth-grade syndrome,” referring to someone (usually a teenager) who has grandiose, delusional, or overly dramatic fantasies about being special, chosen, or possessing hidden powers; often used humorously to describe playful, self-indulgent role-playing or exaggerated imagination. squirrel instantly stood up, raised both front paws high, and shouted, “I am the sun!”

After this one-sided heart-to-heart talk with snake-snake, Song Xu finally fell asleep.

Because the cold weather made him slow to move, snake-snake, after listening to Song Xu’s nonstop rambling, happily flicked his tongue, even though he basically didn’t understand what she was saying.

During the journey, a cave suitable for them to rest in was not that easy to find. If it were only to accommodate Song Xu, it would be fine, but to fit Wumu, this big snake, ordinary caves simply wouldn’t do.

On the second day of travel, they rested much later than on the first day, because Song Xu wasn’t very satisfied with every cave they passed. It wasn’t until night fell that she made a decision about where to stay.

“Let’s stay here today. This tree hollow isn’t big, but you can put half of your body inside.”

The tree hollow in front of them should have been an abandoned nest of some kind of animal. Song Xu cleaned it up a little, then pushed the big snake toward it. “Use force! More force! Hurry and get in! You’re halfway in!”

Half of the big snake tightly blocked the tree hollow. If not for the big snake’s soft body, with this posture of the head squeezing the waist and the waist stacking on the waist, it would take comminuted fractures to achieve it.

There was still more than half of the tail exposed outside. Song Xu pushed thick fallen leaves to cover the tail, then squeezed into the tree hollow with satisfaction.

She wedged herself through the gap, and in the process almost squeezed off all the fur on her body.

“This is way more crowded than a bus.” Song Xu sighed.

The lodging conditions were hard to describe, and food was also no small problem. Wumu still had not started eating, but Song Xu had to eat every day. The nuts she had brought were already used up, and to fill her stomach she could only look for food while walking. This was somewhat rushed, and she also couldn’t eat very full.

But there was one good thing—whenever they arrived at a new place, Song Xu could discover new edible foods.

For a little squirrel full of curiosity, being able to encounter new things every day was also a happy matter.

“Peh!” Song Xu spat out the pale-yellow lumpy thing in her mouth.

She had just dug this thing out. About half of this palm-sized tuber was exposed above ground. After cautiously observing it, she felt she could try it, but who knew the taste would be this stimulating.

And after eating it, her tongue went numb. On this day, Song Xu was unprecedentedly quiet—not because she didn’t want to talk, but because with a big tongue, she sounded strange.

A silent squirrel made the snake worry. Wumu coiled his body round and round, forming a snake pile that was narrow on top and wide on the bottom, placing the squirrel into the space formed by the piled snake tails. The only opening left at the top was completely blocked after he rested his head on it.

The squirrel who suddenly moved into a private little room: “Ts’ih-chien-hang (self-built house)!”

Seeing with his own eyes how hard she worked every day to find lodging, snake-snake actually used his own body to build her a house. What a heartwarming snake-snake!

So such a smart snake-snake—did he recover a little?

As soon as Song Xu’s tongue recovered, she retaliated by talking twice as much. She came up with some intelligence test questions and had snake-snake answer them while walking. Sometimes snake-snake would cooperate a little, sometimes he would directly ignore her, resulting in his intelligence test results being mysteriously high and low.

They walked out of Wumu’s territory.

A small river about four meters wide lay across in front of them. It wasn’t very deep, but the spring river was somewhat swift because of melting snow upstream, and it was cold.

Song Xu put one foot into the river to test it. After pulling it back, she began considering how far a detour would be, or the possibility of making a raft to connect to the opposite bank.

While she was hesitating, snake-snake had already swum across by himself. His body was long, and he quickly reached the opposite bank without even looking back, not waiting for her opinion. But after his head went over, he turned it and looked back this way.

Song Xu understood what he meant. This was telling her to hold onto his body to cross, so she wouldn’t be swept away by the water. As soon as Song Xu stepped into the water, she was wrapped by the tip of snake-snake’s tail and pushed onto the snake’s body. The tail tip even poked her from behind, urging her forward.

Song Xu: “…ah, guessed wrong.” So it was letting her step on him to cross.

The little squirrel stepped on the snake bridge and crossed this four-meter-wide small river, only getting a bit of the fur on her foot paws wet. The thick, long snake body lay across the water, steadily supporting her.

After she crossed the river, Wumu continued swimming forward, as if what had just happened was nothing unusual at all. Song Xu pressed him down and wiped him all over with an animal-hide cloth, wiping away the water on his body.

For a moment, when she was running along the snake’s body, she felt an inexplicable tremor in her heart. Why did snake-snake so naturally use his own body as a bridge to help her cross the river?

Song Xu no longer numbed her mouth until she couldn’t speak by trying messy foods, but Wumu still coiled himself into a ball at every rest. The space made by the long snake tail was just enough to place one squirrel.

“Dong dong dong.” The squirrel asked from inside, “House-snake, are you cold?”

“Landlord, are you asleep?” The squirrel was doing antics inside.

“Landlord, it’s like this—this month’s rent, I want to reduce it a bit. Not to mention, your place is still too cramped, and the lighting is bad. And this isn’t even the city center. How could suburban housing have such expensive rent!” The squirrel performed a one-squirrel show inside.

She was saying things he couldn’t understand again. Although the weather was still somewhat cold, Wumu felt very warm. A noisy fluffy ball was tightly pressed against his abdomen as she slept. She was continuously emitting heat and generously sharing that warmth with him.

Song Xu woke up and pushed away the snake head covering the top. Taking a look outside, the chilly air instantly woke her up. Everything outside was coated with faint traces of rainwater. It had rained lightly last night.

Snake-snake also stretched his body, and the coiled body spread out. In this area, only the small patch of ground where Song Xu had lain last night was still dry.

Although Snake-snake Landlord’s self-built house was small and had poor lighting, it sheltered from wind and rain.

Even so, the squirrel still moved out.

She wiped the dampness from Wumu’s body. “Next time let’s still squeeze into a tree hollow.”

There were more edible foods for Song Xu, because large areas of trees were in bloom. Honey-fruit trees were food production bases deeply favored by many birds and small- to medium-sized tree-climbing experts.

The flowers this kind of tree blooms are pinkish white. They usually open during the day and close at night. The blossoms are trumpet-shaped, clustering together in bunches. Inside the long, slender tube at the base of the trumpet, a large amount of sweet nectar is secreted. Song Xu likes to bite off the flower base at the bottom, then, like sucking through a straw, suck all the nectar out. The flower juice is sweet and light, not cloying, leaving a fragrant aftertaste in the mouth.

Yellow Flower Tree—like the honey-fruit tree, it grows over thirty meters tall, and all kinds of orchids grow epiphytically on its trunk. In spring, it basically does not grow leaves. The entire tree is full of flowers. The yellow blossoms are eye-catching, simply a yellow lollipop standing in the forest, sending out tasting invitations to friends from all directions.

It welcomes all friends who can help it pollinate, but customers like Song Xu, who eat even the flowers themselves, it cannot stop. It can only silently let her eat—after all, it has plenty of flowers.

Song Xu sucked sweet nectar until she didn’t want to leave. She knocked on the buttress roots extending out from beneath the big tree and said to Wumu, “Let’s squeeze in and sleep here tonight.”

“When we run into a travel spot we like, we can stay a little longer.”

Song Xu considerately arranged Wumu’s lodging for the night, gathering branches and large leaves to make him a simple rain shelter in case it rained at night. Then, late at night, instead of sleeping, she climbed back up the tree and ate another round.

These trees were like 24-hour convenience stores. At night, small animals also came to visit. Wumu lay in the gaps between the buttress roots beneath the tree, occasionally lifting his head to look up at the tree, seeing the squirrel’s shadow swaying on the branches, and also hearing the squirrel imitate bird calls.

Footnotes

• 1
  Chuunibyou — A Japanese slang term meaning “eighth-grade syndrome,” referring to someone (usually a teenager) who has grandiose, delusional, or overly dramatic fantasies about being special, chosen, or possessing hidden powers; often used humorously to describe playful, self-indulgent role-playing or exaggerated imagination.