No one would ever know just how much effort it cost Qi Wu to restrain the insane, screeching cravings within his body on that day, when Xie Xishu hurried past him in a panic, attempting to escape.
When he had grabbed Xie Xishu’s collar and pulled him closer, his real intention was absolutely not to ask if the boy was wearing perfume—he knew better than anyone that such soul-snatching, captivating scents could not be concocted from artificial aromatic compounds.
He could smell it.
Those heavenly, marvelous scent particles emanated from deep within the boy’s damp, sweaty skin.
It was too exquisite, too sweet, too rich, too fragrant.
So much so that, in the instant he touched the boy, Qi Wu discovered with sheer terror that he… he actually wanted to lick him.
The thought was absurd but overwhelmingly intense.
Even Qi Wu himself felt panicked by this bizarre craving. A certain chaotic fear suddenly shrouded him, allowing him to briefly reclaim a fragile shard of his sanity in that moment, and he released the boy.
But Qi Wu knew it wasn’t that simple.
His family had always praised Qi Wu’s near-beast-like, keen intuition when handling matters; his instincts were always precise and never faltered.
This time was no different.
His intuition was screaming, warning him that he was sliding into an unknown and indescribable abyss.
He was facing total annihilation.
Yet, that day, Qi Wu still put on a lazy, indifferent act. Seemingly inadvertently, he took the uniform jacket Xie Xishu had left on the bench—he performed the act perfectly; no one noticed that his hands were trembling the entire time he stuffed the jacket into his backpack.
That night, after Qi Wu returned to his nearly empty room, he closed all the doors and windows and destroyed the air circulation system.
Then, he carefully took out the uniform.
Qi Wu’s throat worked, and he bound the jacket across his face.
Xie Xishu’s scent still lingered in the gaps of the cheap fabric. As Qi Wu breathed heavily, the scent was constantly drawn into his nasal cavity, meticulously and gently soothing every single one of his olfactory cells.
Qi Wu closed his eyes, stretching his spine in the darkness, sinking into that impossibly wonderful fragrance.
…After a long time, Qi Wu realized that his tongue had already protruded, like a bright red, moist snake, tightly coiling around the uniform’s collar (the spot where the person’s scent was strongest).
His saliva had soaked that area completely through.
Qi Wu was startled by himself.
A normal human tongue could never be like his—so thin, so long, so flexible, like some kind of proportionally enlarged reptile’s tongue.
It was as if some alien, living creature had parasiticly taken root within him without his knowledge.
In alarm, Qi Wu released his grip, and the next second, his tongue retracted deep into his oral cavity.
Qi Wu furrowed his brows.
He went to the mirror to look at himself. Outwardly, he appeared just as he always had, completely indistinguishable from an ordinary person. But when Qi Wu opened his mouth, he noticed more things that were “off.”
His jaw seemed capable of opening extremely wide.
Tiny white spots were stirring beneath the deep red mucosa inside his mouth, ready to spring out at any moment.
The muscles of his tongue had become abnormally developed, strong, and of considerable length.
Of course, there were other things unrelated to his appearance.
Qi Wu realized that while consuming the meager molecules of scent on the uniform, he had developed an irrepressible, hungry craving for the owner of that scent.
He was very hungry.
…
The second day after discovering that Qi Wu was inexplicably staring at him, Xie Xishu was late.
The reason for his tardiness was a nightmare.
The protagonist of the nightmare was, naturally, Qi Wu. In that dream, Xie Xishu very decisively pushed his desk aside and walked straight toward Qi Wu in the back row of the classroom.
“Why do you keep looking at me?”
Xie Xishu heard himself ask in the dream, his voice trembling violently, filled with terror.
The Qi Wu in the dream maintained that lazy, slothful posture from Xie Xishu’s memory, but he was shrouded in a layer of deep, dark shadows. His features and expression were a blur until, after Xie Xishu’s questioning, he slowly raised his head and grinned at the boy before him.
In the instant their faces met, Xie Xishu let out a sharp, pathetic scream—
A tongue.
A bright red, long, thin tongue probed out from Qi Wu’s mouth.
But it wasn’t just that one tongue on Qi Wu’s face. His eye sockets were empty of eyeballs; two other equally moist, thick, drooling tongues were squirming like snail tentacles, reaching toward Xie Xishu.
Xie Xishu couldn’t run at all before those tongues, like the greediest, most cunning forest pythons, coiled around him.
“I look at you because… I very, very much… want to lick you…”
“This is the reward… I deserve…”
Muffled, incoherent mutterings spilled from deep within Qi Wu’s throat, which was filled with tongues.
“You are sweet.”
“I want to lick you.”
“Let me have a taste… I won’t bite you… I’ll just lick…”
More tongues grew out of Qi Wu’s body.
And at this moment, they were all coiled around Xie Xishu.
Xie Xishu sat up in bed, drenched in sweat.
Copious amounts of cold sweat had soaked his pajamas, and the sticky sensation remaining on his skin made the images from the nightmare feel even more vivid, to the point where Xie Xishu couldn’t control himself and clutched his mouth, letting out a dry retch.
Fortunately, after a few minutes, as the haziness of just waking up faded, Xie Xishu calmed down. He forced himself to get up and rummaged through his nightstand to find a thermometer. After measuring his temperature, the value on the LCD screen made Xie Xishu’s already pale face even more bloodless.
He had a fever again.
“Tsk—”
A strong sense of self-loathing washed over Xie Xishu like a tide.
He knew very well why he had a fever; it was nothing more than the excessive pressure caused by discovering Qi Wu was staring at him, and that pressure induced his fever.
The same thing had happened many times, so often that Xie Xishu himself had become accustomed to it.
Because his parents were working abroad, there was no one else in the house. After Xie Xishu got up, he got some fever-reducing medicine for himself, then packed his bag, preparing to head to school. However, at the exact moment he opened the door, the humid, stifling air of high summer surged into the room, enveloping Xie Xishu’s body. In a daze, Xie Xishu thought of last night’s nightmare once again.
The dark, eerie voyeurism of the Qi Wu in the dream, and the tactile sensation of the sticky, warm tongues, seemed to remain attached to him even now… as if he had never truly woken up from the nightmare.
Xie Xishu’s footsteps paused briefly.
…Actually, if he wasn’t feeling well, it wouldn’t matter if he stayed home to rest. Nanming No. 3 didn’t strictly monitor attendance, and he had the privileges of a top student. It stood to reason that even if he took a day off, no teacher would pursue it.
The pale, thin boy held the doorknob in one hand and unconsciously picked at his backpack strap with the other. He stood in place for several seconds, and then, he suddenly trembled slightly. As if waking from a dream, he slammed the door shut—in the final second before the gap closed, Xie Xishu unconsciously raised his head, aiming his gaze at the end of the corridor.
The door to his parents’ bedroom remained tightly shut.
He couldn’t say why.
But inexplicably, he didn’t want to stay home just because of a routine fever, even though there was no one else in the house anyway.
After dragging his feet, taking his medicine, and heading out, the bell for morning self-study had long since rung by the time Xie Xishu arrived at school.
However, he didn’t care much. After all, in a school like Nanming No. 3, bells for self-study or classes had always been purely ceremonial. For the students here, showing up at school at all was already considered quite obedient.
Yet today’s situation was not quite as Xie Xishu remembered.
Before he even reached the school gate, he heard the clamor from afar. Then he saw that the school gate, which was usually unmonitored regardless of lateness or early departure, was currently crowded with a large group of people.
And a familiar figure, with the momentum of “one man stands in the pass, ten thousand cannot break through,” held a teaching pointer and blocked the gate with a livid expression.
It was Ms. Li.
She wasn’t very old, but perhaps to maintain authority over the students, Ms. Li usually wore a somewhat dowdy, rigid suit, and today was no exception.
The only difference was that today, Ms. Li actually seemed capable of suppressing the students: the young female teacher’s eyes were bloodshot, and beneath her thick lenses, those slightly bulging eyeballs were widened as if they could pop out of their sockets at any moment.
Her expression was exceptionally severe—so severe that her face looked slightly distorted.
When she spoke, Ms. Li’s voice was sharper and more piercing than usual.
From far away, Xie Xishu could hear her roar: “Didn’t I tell you that if you come to school, you have to look like a student?! The school rules say you must wear uniforms and abide by the regulations; you should be obedient. If not, don’t come to school. Look, look at this ghost-like appearance of yours… so cheeky even when you’re late. Do you know that if you keep going on like this, you will only become the scum and toxins of society…”
Faced with the teacher’s roar, the few students from the third school blocked at the gate didn’t make a sound, but it was clear they weren’t afraid of her; they were just stunned by Ms. Li’s sudden change in demeanor.
Everyone knew the school spirit at the third school hadn’t become this way in a day or two. Ms. Li hadn’t been transferred here for long, but anyone normal would have figured out the situation long ago. Yet today, the teacher seemed to have suddenly gone mad; she not only started managing their studies but also began nitpicking small details like not wearing uniforms or being late.
Fine, this might be normal in other schools.
But at the third school, Ms. Li’s behavior could be considered a farce. If someone had dared to spout such nonsense to this group of little devils in the past, they would have had to deal with the consequences one way or another.
However, today’s Ms. Li was different from any other time. A frantic, chilling sense of mania swirled around the young teacher, and even a layman could see there was something wrong with her.
For a moment, everyone was intimidated by her aura, and even the most troublesome students stood blankly in place, not moving.
For some reason, Xie Xishu’s eyelids twitched violently. He had an inexplicable, ominous premonition and subconsciously took a step back—yet, across the long distance, Ms. Li glared over as if she had eyes that could see for miles.
…Xie Xishu was caught red-handed.
A few minutes later, at the school gate—
“Xie Xishu? You… why have you become like this, too?”
The gaze Ms. Li fixed on Xie Xishu was filled with condemnation. She muttered, repeating herself, her voice trembling slightly.
Xie Xishu didn’t say a word. He wasn’t about to go with the flow and give up on himself like the other students, but at this moment, even he was speechless.
It was just lateness. Even in a proper, good high school, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But here, Ms. Li acted as if he had committed some intolerable, massive error.
“Go stand over there—I’m going to record the names of everyone here in a moment!”
Seeing Xie Xishu’s lack of reaction, Ms. Li was clearly even more frantic. She glared at Xie Xishu as if he were a disappointment, a raised vein on her temple pulsing rhythmically; her pupils were squeezed by the blood-red whites of her eyes, shrinking into two tiny, thin dots.
Xie Xishu’s lips parted, but he couldn’t get the words out. Looking at Ms. Li’s unusually hyperactive face, he involuntarily fell silent.
“…”
He silently walked over to the group of unlucky souls at the school gate, experiencing the punishment of standing still.
“You lot, don’t think being late is a small matter. It’s because you don’t take the school’s regulations seriously that you’ve become so loose. Living your lives aimlessly and in a daze like this, your future will be completely destroyed. You will drag down your families, drag down society…”
After catching the students, Ms. Li’s emotions not only didn’t cool down, but instead became even more excited, her voice climbing higher and higher.
“Fuck, is this crazy woman addicted to lecturing people? Does she really think we’re afraid of her?!”
“Exactly. We gave her some face before because she was acting crazy, and now she’s still here nagging. Otherwise, we should give her a taste of her own medicine so she knows better.”
…
Xie Xishu heard a few boys next to him already muttering impatiently.
On the other side, someone from the teacher’s side noticed the restlessness in the crowd and walked over with a bitter face to negotiate with Ms. Li, trying to appease the female teacher whose mania was clearly abnormal.
Just as the situation was gradually becoming chaotic, several figures appeared at the school gate that stood out entirely from the rest of the students.
The crowd, which had been growing rowdy, fell silent the moment they arrived.
The people arriving were none other than Qi Wu and his gang.
“Cough, what’s going on here? Crowded around like this?”
The first to speak was Xiao Wu. He poked his head to look at the spectacular scene at the school gate, raised his eyebrows, and shouted with great interest.
“Are you serious? Fuck, when did our third school start catching latecomers? Are they crazy?”
Looking around, the newcomers finally understood the situation, their voices filled with even more surprise.
Hearing the clearly disrespectful shouting from the young students, the dean, who was currently trying to appease Ms. Li, didn’t scold them but turned white in an instant.
Even Ms. Li’s voice lowered, as if she had suddenly detached from the extreme, neurotic excitement.
She stared straight at Qi Wu, her cheeks twitching several times.
Qi Wu was clearly also one of the late students, and according to Ms. Li’s previous rant, Qi Wu should also have been one of the people whose name was recorded for a school-wide public critique… yet, did anyone really dare to publicly critique Qi Wu school-wide?
The scene suddenly became awkward, but what no one expected was that Qi Wu actually stopped in his tracks in front of Ms. Li.
The boy’s gloomy, indifferent gaze swept over the crowd before pausing on Xie Xishu’s pale face.
“Those who are late get their names recorded, right?”
Qi Wu lowered his eyelids and asked in a low, flat tone.
“I understand.”
Without waiting for Ms. Li to respond, Qi Wu had already turned around and walked straight into the group of unfortunate students standing in punishment at the gate.
Ignoring the shocked, dazed expressions of the others, he simply picked a spot to stand—and that position happened to be right next to Xie Xishu.
Forget the group that had been planning a riot earlier.
Even the dean was completely stunned. The fat, pig-eared man’s eyes flickered, constantly darting back and forth between Ms. Li and Qi Wu; his expression was as rich as if he had eaten undercooked Yunnan mushrooms.
For a moment, everyone’s attention was fixed on Qi Wu.
Xie Xishu was no exception.
Of course, Qi Wu didn’t press tightly against Xie Xishu, but the distance of only one arm could not dispel the boy’s exceptionally strong sense of presence.
That faint sense of crisis struck again. On such a hot summer morning, Xie Xishu found himself covered in cold sweat.
“Huff…”
Xie Xishu didn’t know if he was oversensitive, but he truly felt that Qi Wu’s breathing was abnormally heavy.
Heavy, and murky.
And his hair stood on end.
Immediately after, Xie Xishu suddenly heard Qi Wu speak in a very, very low voice: “Xie Xishu?”
Xie Xishu jolted, looking toward Qi Wu in terror.
Qi Wu was still wearing that expressionless mask.
But Xie Xishu noticed that his masseter muscles were kept extremely tense.
“…Why come to school when you have a fever?”
The boy’s tone was exceptionally strange.
With his attention entirely on the slightly raised veins on Qi Wu’s face, Xie Xishu was half a beat slow before he clearly heard Qi Wu’s words.
How did Qi Wu know he had a fever?
Shocked beyond measure, Xie Xishu was completely frozen, unable to answer a single word.
After asking that question, Qi Wu returned to silence.
It was as if what Xie Xishu had just heard was merely his own hallucination—and Qi Wu had remained quietly in place the whole time, the only thing abnormal about him perhaps being that very heavy, slow breathing.
For Xie Xishu, time had never felt so slow.
Although, in reality, everything ended very quickly: Qi Wu’s arrival directly terminated this farce ignited by Ms. Li.
The suddenly deflated female teacher’s eyes became unfocused. In a trance, holding onto her last breath of strength, she cleared the entrance to the school gate. She opened her mouth and told the students to enter the school.
But the students gathered at the gate pushed and shoved for a while, yet no one dared to move.
They were all looking at Qi Wu, waiting for Qi Wu’s action.
Watched by so many people, Qi Wu acted as if nothing had happened. He remained in place in his previous posture, lowering his eyelids, not knowing what he was thinking. After a good while, he took a deep breath, straightened up, and walked toward the school gate.
He didn’t know if it was because he was too focused on his thoughts, but as he passed Xie Xishu, Qi Wu’s fingertips grazed Xie Xishu’s hand.
Xie Xishu shivered slightly, burnt by Qi Wu’s passing body temperature. He curled his hand up subconsciously, retreating a step uncontrollably.
In terror, he felt that Qi Wu seemed to have turned his head and looked at him deeply.
As Qi Wu moved, the others followed toward the school, and the third school’s gate returned to its original noisy, disordered state… appearing to finally become normal again.
Xie Xishu frowned, falling to the very back of the line, and only after ensuring the distance from Qi Wu was sufficient did he enter, still in a state of shock.
But before he could step inside the gate, Ms. Li called out to him directly from the crowd again.
“Xie Xishu, you know, I’ve always thought you were a good seed who could get into a key university.”
Ms. Li grabbed Xie Xishu’s hand, using quite a bit of force.
Xie Xishu looked at the teacher in front of him, confused, and nodded after a moment of hesitation.
“Th, thank you, teacher; I will work hard…”
“You must not become as degenerate as that group of toxic scum, Xie Xishu. Promise the teacher you will never be late again, okay?”
Xie Xishu felt increasingly that Ms. Li was inexplicably strange.
But thinking of the concern she had shown him over this period, Xie Xishu nodded, murmuring a perfunctory, “Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“That’s good, that’s good. The teacher knows you are still savable; the teacher believes in you.”
Upon hearing this, Ms. Li grinned and smiled at Xie Xishu.
The instant he saw that smile, the uncomfortable feeling in Xie Xishu’s heart surged again. He instinctively shook off Ms. Li’s hand.
“Uh, I have to go to class. Teacher, I’m leaving first.”
Xie Xishu spoke in an extremely stiff tone to the teacher before him.
Just before he was about to leave, however, Ms. Li gave him another heavy tug.
“Xie Xishu.”
The young female teacher turned her head, slightly twitching her nose as if identifying something.
“…Students should focus on their studies. You are a student, and a male one at that, so don’t go mess with perfume or any other crooked paths. It will affect your grades.”
When I read the summary for this novel, I honestly either expected a trashy smut novel or… Something else. A promising but ultimately just average novel? It definitely wasn’t this. Maybe it’s too early to comment, but I love the dark vibe themes so far. And now it seems like our poor MC is going to be seen as gourmet delicacy by, uh, mutants?
Another one…? Please don’t eat him 🙏
Oh? So I’m guessing the flu that broke out in the city has side effects of making the sense of smell sharper? Plus the whatever reptile thing, so not only Qi Wu, Teacher Li as well? Quite creepy…
Thanks for the translation.