Qi Wu stared blankly at Xie Xishu.
After his lips moved for a long time, he stammered a response.
“Dating…you.”
After a pause, the boy suddenly straightened his neck, glaring at Xie Xishu with a mixture of urgency and speed, adding, “…Is that not okay?”
It was only at that moment that Xie Xishu realized that even after transforming into a monster, the other person could still blush.
At least the Qi Wu standing in front of him now looked like he was on the verge of ripening.
Xie Xishu hesitated for quite a while before tentatively reminding him.
“I’m a boy.”
“I know.”
“You’re… gay?”
Xie Xishu asked hesitantly.
Qi Wu’s answer was unusually straightforward: “No.”
Xie Xishu: “Then—”
“I just like you; among boys, I only want to date you.”
Xie Xishu pressed his lips together and instinctively said, “So you still like girls…”
He remembered that because Qi Wu was handsome and exuded a dangerous aura, many girls at school were quite infatuated with him. Before Xie Xishu could sort out his thoughts, Qi Wu’s answer directly interrupted everything.
“If you were a girl, I’d like you too.”
After a moment of silence, as if realizing that his previous statement had ambiguous implications, Qi Wu awkwardly added an explanation: “Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl. I only like you; I… I just want to be with you.”
Xie Xishu: “…”
The boy stared dazedly at the already transformed boy in front of him, biting his lip and looking confused and lost.
Xie Xishu’s silence made Qi Wu’s heart race; he appeared increasingly restless.
He pretended to be calm as he stood in front of the boy, feeling that time had never felt as long as it did now, and his heart was pounding wildly in his chest—Qi Wu even suspected that if he hadn’t already transformed into a monster, giving him exceptionally strong vitality, he would have already died from cardiac arrest due to the extreme excitement.
How did I end up saying that?
Qi Wu was frantically questioning himself in his heart.
And why had they suddenly jumped to the topic of dating?
Although he had been desperately analyzing his complex and strange emotions during this time, just thinking about it made all the problems that had troubled him for many days fall into place.
Why did he want to desperately kiss the other person’s pale lips?
Why did he constantly want to be close to them?
Why did he feel irritable because of the other’s distant, guarded, and feigned friendly attitude?
Why did he want to make the other person happy?
Why did he want to protect the other person’s safety at all costs?
Why did he want to possess the other person entirely?
…
In that brief moment just now, with a flash of realization, Qi Wu was terrified to discover that he truly… wanted to date.
To date Xie Xishu.
Ironically, at the same moment he found the answer, he had already said that sentence in front of Xie Xishu.
Qi Wu realized that he hadn’t even made the most basic preparations for this: After all, those idiots who had hung out with him back in the day at least knew to buy some milk tea months in advance or bring a bouquet of roses when confessing their feelings.
But before this, he had only given Xie Xishu a box of orange juice.
Oh, and he had also handed him a knife, letting him chop at his own tentacles, successfully scaring the tearful boy into crying again.
…
[Damn—]
Before Qi Wu noticed, the crack on his body had unconsciously opened up, revealing several tense and slightly trembling tentacles.
His already fragile human form thus appeared somewhat terrifying, despite being purely an instinctive reaction: the monster’s newly developed organs could more sensitively capture the subtle scent of “prey” in the absence of camouflage, allowing him to judge the other’s state.
Xie Xishu stared at Qi Wu for at least half a minute.
Qi Wu noticed that Xie Xishu’s body temperature had clearly risen at first, and his ears had begun to redden slightly (his heartbeat was further challenging physiological limits), but soon, the boy’s complexion turned extremely pale, and the scent he emitted became tinged with a bitter astringency.
“…You have a problem.”
Xie Xishu murmured.
“So that’s why you… like me.”
The boy’s voice was hoarse and weak, sounding more like a whisper of terror.
Qi Wu’s movements froze in place.
His pupils instantly narrowed into slits.
“Bullshit.”
He said.
“Is it abnormal to like you? What question—”
Xie Xishu somewhat awkwardly interrupted him.
“Did you hear what I said earlier?”
Qi Wu’s throat tightened, and his back instinctively stiffened.
What had Xie Xishu said earlier?
Qi Wu certainly didn’t dare to admit it; at that moment, he had been in an incredibly excited state, to the point that he hadn’t even paid attention to Xie Xishu’s words.
Faced with the boy’s extremely anxious expression, Qi Wu began racking his brains to recall.
After much effort, he finally retrieved what Xie Xishu had said at that time—
[I’m not afraid of you; I’m afraid of myself. I doubt I can attract a monster.]
*
Now it was Qi Wu’s turn to have a complicated expression.
“What does that mean?”
The boy’s voice was somewhat rough.
“Didn’t we already know this? You’re an uninfected person; you’re alive. In movies and games, it’s portrayed so often that anyone would want to take a bite out of someone like you—a zombie or monster—”
After pausing, Qi Wu’s gaze wandered slightly.
“Isn’t that quite normal…”
Xie Xishu’s breathing became even heavier than before.
“I’m not talking about that.”
His throat felt a bit dry. Before today, he had never thought he would really reveal that terrifying suspicion to another person.
“I had a dream…”
Then, Xie Xishu told Qi Wu everything he had seen in his dream, word for word.
“…Actually, I didn’t want to believe it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more scared I became. You might not know this, but my mom used to work in virus research.”
“Hmm.”
“She worked at a public virus control center, but later, she was fired.”
At the time, the incident occurred right after Xie Xishu had just graduated from elementary school.
After his mother was fired, the atmosphere at home turned gloomy for a long time, to the point that he still remembered that dark and oppressive period.
As a sensitive child, Xie Xishu instinctively began to pay attention to his mother’s every move.
He didn’t know why his mother had been fired from what was supposed to be a stable job; he only knew that the uncles and aunts who used to come over for dinner had stopped appearing.
“One day, I heard what seemed to be a fight at home in the middle of the night, so I got up and opened the door a crack to look into the living room. I discovered that a very close friend of my mother’s had come to the house at three in the morning, and they were arguing in hushed tones. I had never seen my mother so furious and angry before.”
“That aunt had never been so fierce either… She kept scolding my mom for playing with fire, saying my mom had gone crazy because of my dad, which led to her being fired.”
“She also said that my mom leaving the research unit was a good thing. At that time, my mom’s expression… how should I put it… I almost thought she would grab a fruit knife and kill that aunt.”
“Fortunately, my mom didn’t act violently; that aunt stormed out and never appeared again. Later, my mom found me and scolded me fiercely.”
*
A few months later, Xie Xishu discovered that his mother had found a new job.
It was in a completely independent private research institute—after some time, Xie Xishu would learn that his father had also resigned from his original position and followed his mother to the same research institute.
Speaking of this, Xie Xishu raised his head and looked at Qi Wu with fear: “… Qi Wu, did you know? Actually, I realized when I was very young that I didn’t look at all like my mom and dad.”
*
Xie Xishu’s voice was somewhat weak, and when he talked about his childhood, the expression in his eyes made Qi Wu’s fingertips itch a little.
He didn’t know why, but he suddenly wanted to “smoke.”
Because that would help him suppress that kind of desire.
He very, very much wanted to reach out and wrap that fragmented person, who only maintained his original appearance with a thin outer shell, entirely within his own body.
Fortunately, having learned from past experiences, Qi Wu’s rationality still prevailed.
“So you think when you were weak as a child, your parents might have used you for experiments, leading to… um, causing mutated monsters to unconsciously be attracted to you now?”
He summarized in a low voice.
Xie Xishu didn’t speak, just nodded with a pale face.
“So you think that’s why I like you?”
Xie Xishu hesitated for a few seconds before nodding again.
“Alright then…”
Qi Wu took a deep breath, suddenly curling the corners of his mouth and smiling.
Upon hearing that cold laugh, Xie Xishu felt his heart sink into his stomach—
“If you want to think that way, it’s fine.”
Then he listened as Qi Wu said, “I just have one question.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you agree?”
Xie Xishu finally found it strange at this point. He raised his eyes in confusion to look at Qi Wu, just in time to meet that person’s frighteningly focused gaze.
“Agree? Agree to what?”
He heard himself panic as he mumbled the question.
“Agree to date me?”
Qi Wu’s expression was somewhat peculiar, appearing both irritated and a bit angry, but there was also an underlying hint of tension.
And Xie Xishu was left stunned in place.
He really hadn’t expected that after hearing the backstory and contemplating his own guesses for a long time… Qi Wu was still fixated on this damn dating issue?!
Now, even Xie Xishu was starting to stutter.
“I… um… but…”
Seeing that Xie Xishu had stammered for a long time without a complete response, Qi Wu suddenly raised an eyebrow and forcefully took the lead in the conversation.
“Forget it, I’ll just leave it here— I, Qi Wu, like you and want to be in a relationship with you.”
The boy’s tone had little fluctuation, but the end of his sentence had a barely perceptible tremor.
“I don’t think I like you because of some genetic mutation conspiracy; I don’t care about that.”
“I just want to date you.”
“If you’re not sure right now, you can think it over some more and give me an answer later.”
……
After saying all this, Qi Wu let out a long breath— as if he had been holding his breath until this moment.
Then he turned and walked toward the living room, which was not far from the kitchen.
“I’ll go see if there’s anything useful there—”
Before he finished speaking, a huge roar suddenly sounded from afar.
Xie Xishu and Qi Wu instantly jolted and looked out the window of the villa together.
The villa was on a low floor, but fortunately, the terrain of the entire area was relatively high, allowing them to overlook the skyline of City A from afar.
What caught their eyes now was a series of massive, billowing black clouds rising up.
