On any normal day, Jiang Ying would never have crawled out of bed before noon on a weekend.
But today, she made a point to wake up early and submitted an online request to return and exchange her bed.
Her only fear was that the bizarre piece of furniture might hurt her dog. As for last night’s embarrassing memories, she had long since tossed them to the back of her mind.
After all, in her view, he was just her dog. She didn’t see anything romantic about it.
Su Heng, however, felt differently.
He did not sleep a wink the entire night.
If he stayed in the room, he would always want to get closer to her. After watching her drift back to sleep, he got up and retreated to the balcony.
The biting winter wind lashed his face, finally snapping him back to some semblance of clarity.
When he saw her the next day, stretching languidly and strolling out of his room with a face full of satisfaction, the truth hit Su Heng squarely: she didn’t care at all about what had happened the night before.
She really didn’t care…
Then what was the point of that post she made yesterday?
The moment that thought surfaced in his mind, Su Heng was shocked to realize that he was actually feeling disappointed.
Jiang Ying, however, acted as if nothing happened. She casually went back to her own room, changed clothes, and started her morning wash-up routine.
She put on makeup again.
Busying herself for a long while before coming out, she asked him to check if it was smudged.
“I made plans with Chuchu ages ago. We’re going shopping together today. You’ll be okay staying home by yourself, Su Heng?”
She wore a dress with a style quite different from her work attire—puffy, as if held out by a petticoat. Su Heng knew nothing about human girl fashions or those two-dimensional, cosplay-inspired outfits. All he could think was that she looked like a soft, sweet-smelling little cake at that moment.
He averted his gaze, conflicted words tumbling around in his throat a few times before he finally forced them out, his voice awkward. “You… don’t you need me to go with you?”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than he worried she’d find that phrasing too suggestive.
After a pause, he explained further. “It is my job, after all. The contract states that whenever you need me, I should be your guide, your eyes, ready at all times.”
“No need.”
Her refusal was so immediate, without a shred of hesitation, that he froze on the spot.
He had thought that she was the one who needed him.
Yet he kept having this feeling… as if he was the one afraid of the day she would no longer need him.
Jiang Ying fumbled through the closet, searching for a matching bag.
Her attention wasn’t on Su Heng, so she naturally didn’t notice the strange, stiff unease in his tone. She was busy thinking about which bag would go with her current outfit while continuing in a slow, unhurried pace. “Chuchu will be here to pick me up any minute.”
He had forgotten. Even without her blind cane, she still had friends, best friends.
She was such a popular person. If it weren’t for her blindness, she wouldn’t need his presence at all.
Su Heng tried to ignore his inexplicably sinking mood and responded with a low, “Mm.”
This time, Jiang Ying seemed to pick up on something a little different.
She turned around toward the direction of the sound he had just made, tilting her face up as if to “look” at him.
“Of course, if you want to go out and walk around, that’s okay too! Ah, but someone’s coming this afternoon to replace the bed.” She assumed her dog was feeling bored staying home alone and wanted to go out and play. Thinking for a moment, she calculated the time. “I should be back by then. No worries, no worries.”
Replace the bed…
Su Heng hadn’t expected her words yesterday to be serious. She had actually gone and placed an order to return this bed.
Those functions were indeed things that shamed him, but the heat suppression function was genuinely helpful for him.
If that function were gone, how could he continue to stay by her side?
“I’ll be at home.”
He told this one small lie.
His plan was to take advantage of her being out to buy the heat suppressant patches he hadn’t managed to get last time, then rush back before she returned home. That way, she wouldn’t discover he had gone to buy… that sort of thing, and she’d be able to enjoy her outing without worry.
As he said this, he evaded her “gaze” once more.
Clearly, he was an undercover agent sent from the Empire to the Federation. Everything he displayed at this moment was false, deliberately fabricated. And yet, he seemed unable to remain completely unmoved, unable to tell even such a small lie right in front of her without feeling something.
“So you don’t need to rush back. You can—”
Before he could finish, her lips landed on his cheek with a soft smack.
Su Heng stumbled backward two steps in a fluster. His averted gaze snapped back to see her smiling with her eyes narrowed, calling him “Good Dog” once again.
“Whose doggy is such a wonderful, good boy?”
Jiang Ying cooed, just like every dog lover doting on their pet, stepping forward to hug him.
With a mischievous grin, she reached out her hand, casually ruffling the big fluffy tail behind him. “I’ll still try to come back as soon as I can! Having such a good dog waiting for me at home makes coming home the happiest moment of the day.”
Su Heng flushed from his neck to the tips of his ears, his tail still unconsciously rubbing into her palm. But right then, the doorbell rang, and Jiang Ying immediately withdrew the hand that was tousling his tail.
It was obvious that the allure of her best friend coming in person to whisk her away for a shopping trip far outweighed that of the dog she’d only had for less than a week.
Like a bad woman who flirted and ran without any sense of responsibility, she grabbed her bag, slipped on her shoes, and dashed out the door in a flash.
The two of them went to a nearby comic convention. It was relatively small and didn’t have many exhibition booths.
Their project R&D team’s main focus was on a larger upcoming convention, and they were also busy lately with the Valentine’s Day version. So no one from their team was sent to participate; only colleagues from the marketing department were working overtime here.
Jiang Ying rarely got to attend as an ordinary gaming and anime enthusiast. But her blindness reduced the fun of walking around the convention to near zero. Aside from singing performances, she had absolutely no sense of participation.
Even though Jin Chuyu described things for her the whole way, it wasn’t long before her excitement for a fun day out faded, replaced by a listless state of mind that felt more like seeking references for work.
All her motivation drained away.
Inside the small venue, Jin Chuyu held her arm, carefully navigating around the crowd.
Spotting a booth surrounded by a ring of people up ahead, she suddenly grew excited. “Hey, that’s our game’s booth over there! They have cosplayers of all four male leads!”
Jiang Ying couldn’t see a thing, and at this distance, she couldn’t make out anything clearly either.
“Work’s been way too busy lately. I didn’t even have time to look at the candidates marketing submitted before.”
She tugged at Jin Chuyu’s sleeve. “Come on, Chuchu, let’s go take a look.”
As Jin Chuyu led her over, she couldn’t help exclaiming, “Oh my god, this Akkad is way too accurate!”
Getting a chance to interact with the cosplayers required waiting in line. Jin Chuyu excitedly pulled Jiang Ying into the line for Akkad.
“I heard before that this place was beastman-friendly, but I didn’t expect marketing to actually find a beastman to cosplay Akkad!”
She shook Jiang Ying’s arm. “Yingying, you absolutely have to try the interaction. He looks just like he stepped straight off the page of your creation. Even that beauty mark by the corner of his eye looks so real.”
“But…”
But the booths at an otome game convention, and the interactions with cosplayers, were all romance-oriented.
And Akkad was a beastman, so the cosplayer was a beastman, too.
Even though this was a character she herself had designed, she now had a beastman cognitive disorder, making it difficult to accept being with a beastman in that context…
Jin Chuyu saw her internal struggle. “Just think of it as interacting with your guide dog at home? But if you really can’t do it, then don’t force yourself.”
Jiang Ying hesitated for a moment, then stayed in the line.
She wanted to cure her cognitive disorder.
Doctor Jin had also mentioned that more contact with beastmen might be helpful for her condition.
Even though she’d been interacting with her own dog constantly, the results didn’t seem very effective so far.
Maybe it was because her exposure to beastmen had been too limited?
Jiang Ying silently reasoned with herself in her mind.
This is just for show. It’s fake. It’s just a performance to provide emotional value to the players. It’s not a real situation where I’m dating a beastman.
Right, we’re different species. How could that even be possible?
Akkad is just a big doggy, no different from the doggy I have at home. There’s nothing to this. Humans hug little dogs too, and I hug Su Heng. This is perfectly normal.
“I’ll give it a try,” she finally made up her mind.
The line crept forward a little bit more.
Su Heng had waited nearly half an hour in line before finally entering the store.
He pulled on the baseball cap he’d brought in his luggage, and since he was already wearing a hoodie, he pulled the hood up over his head. Two layers of brims pressed down, the shadows concealing his features. Just like that, he headed into the nearest Beastman Specialty Store and bought several boxes of heat suppressant patches intended for large beasts of prey.
After paying, a few female beastman students entered the store. They had been in line behind him and seemed to be watching some kind of live stream.
Su Heng immediately packed his purchases up, ready to leave, when a familiar voice drifted from their mobile devices.
“Wh-what do you mean, hubby? No, I…”
Su Heng whipped his head around. Before he even had time to process what was happening, his eyes swept across the phone screen in front of him.
It was Jiang Ying.
She was standing right in front of a tall, strapping male beastman, clutching the hem of her skirt, her cheeks burning crimson.
The foot Su Heng had already stepped out the door retracted back inside.
He had never seen such an expression on her face—at least, never once when she faced him. Why was that?
And what was she saying… hubby?
The several female beastman students let out good-natured giggles and moved off toward other shelves. “That big sister is so shy. She went up to interact with the cosplayer, but she can’t bring herself to call him hubby.”
Since he couldn’t see the live stream anymore, Su Heng could only judge based on their conversation.
“Why is that big sister just standing there without moving forward?”
“Ah, could she be blind? Seems like she’s looking for where Akkad is.”
“Ahhhhh, Akkad noticed!! He’s walking straight toward that big sister!!! Oh my god!! So assertive!!!!”
“I’m so jealous.”
“Can’t be helped. Although that venue is beastman-friendly, our tickets cost several times more than the regular price. Buying one requires all sorts of verification, getting in involves a ton of tedious checks, and we even had to sign some pretty rights-trampling agreements. It’s a huge hassle.”
“Good heavens, is he going to princess-carry her? I want Akkad to carry me like a princess and spin me around too…”
Su Heng felt something thick lodge itself in his chest, making breathing feel a little difficult.
He pressed down his hat brim and swiftly left the store, not hearing the students’ conversation that followed.
“Ah, that big sister turned him down. She’s really so shy, just gave her spot straight to the next person in line…”
Su Heng returned home in silence. He took a piece of the suppressant patch he’d just bought and stuck it on the back of his neck.
It was cool at first, then comfortably warm. Very pleasant. Almost as if her fingertips were pressed against him there.
Why was he thinking of her again?
Frustrated, he pushed aside these tormenting thoughts and obediently sat on the sofa to wait for her to come home.
He didn’t know how much time passed. The waiting made him increasingly anxious. He felt a dazed sense that his state wasn’t quite right, as if he were drunk.
The thing stuck to his neck didn’t suppress his heat cycle state at all. Instead, it only made him miss her more.
Like a dog with separation anxiety, frantic the moment it lost sight of its owner.
Just when he could barely stand it any longer, footsteps sounded from outside the door.
It was her. He knew it in an instant.
“Good doggy, I’m—”
The moment Jiang Ying stepped through the door, before she could even finish her sentence, a thick, powerful tail looped around her waist, lifting her entire body off the ground.
“Ah!” Startled, she hurriedly threw her arms around Su Heng’s neck.
The next second, the shadow before her pressed down, wedging her firmly between the door and himself. Su Heng’s cheek rubbed against her, as if not yet satisfied. He turned his head and licked the side of her face.
She was held in his arms, unable to move.
When she turned her head away, he gently pinched her chin, guiding her back. Her face and neck were bathed in his scorching, uneven breaths.
Struggling instinctively did nothing. Besides his tail securely wrapped around her waist, her knees were also pinned by his legs.
Behind her was the hard, unyielding door. Pressing against her from the front was the beastman, just as solidly.
For the first time, Jiang Ying felt “danger” radiating from Su Heng.
After licking her, he buried his head into the crook of her neck, sniffing, as if trying to discern some other scent. A low, rumbling sound came from his throat, along with what seemed like fragmented, half-formed words.
Jiang Ying couldn’t make it out. All she could smell was an overwhelmingly aggressive, rich aroma of alcohol emanating from him.
The scent made her head spin. Feeling woozy, she leaned against his shoulder, panting softly. “Su Heng… have you been drinking?”