Abe Village’s village head Kevin had been extremely irritated lately, which visibly twisted his originally handsome face.
Seeing her husband unable to eat, with a swollen gum, yet still drinking large cups of wine at lunch and dinner, even a heartless woman like Ginny couldn’t help but speak to her husband in gentle, soft tones.
“Kevin, what exactly are you upset about? I am your legal wife, so I think I have the right to know your troubles and share the burden with you.”
As his wife wrapped her arms around his neck, Kevin subconsciously wanted to push her away. But thinking of the events from the past few days, he held back.
——Kevin was the nephew of Lem Town’s town head, Tobias Gordonworth. His parents had both died from an epidemic when he was young, so Kevin grew up in Tobias’s household.
As a proud member of the Gordonworth Family, Kevin, who idolized his uncle, accepted Tobias’s suggestion before he was even an adult. He moved to Abe Village to live there and began pursuing Ginny, the granddaughter of the old village head Mr. Morgan.
It was probably because he learned that Kevin, like Ginny, had lost his parents to the epidemic. Mr. Morgan entrusted Ginny to Kevin with peace of mind, filled with pity, trust, and fondness for him. After Ginny married Kevin, he quickly handed over the village head position to him, just as Tobias had predicted.
Kevin had successfully fulfilled his uncle’s entrustment, which made him both proud and feel even closer to his uncle.
Earl Ulysses Grant was a favorite in front of Her Majesty the Queen. This beautiful man, said to be so handsome that even the goddess of love would blush and her heart race upon seeing him, humbled himself to come to Lem Town in order to carry out the “Progress Act” personally issued by the Queen. In order to entertain Earl Grant well, Tobias had Kevin find a few clean, pretty, and ignorant village women to serve as the earl’s “temporary chamber pot”… oh no, temporarily “care for” Earl Grant.
Carpenter Henry’s wife Mary had once been the most beautiful woman in Abe Village. Conveniently, carpenter Henry had recently died alone in the mountains.
“You also want to earn more money for your daughter, right?” “Earl Grant has a kind heart; if you take good care of him, he will surely help you.”… Kevin had prepared a bellyful of such persuasive words for Mary.
Who would have thought that the Mary Kevin met was completely different from the Mary in his memory? That drunken, foul-smelling dirty woman was someone even he couldn’t look at, so how could he dare send such a woman before Earl Grant?
Kevin hastily took his leave, and Mary stuffed a bouquet of flowers into his hands.
Mary’s unpleasant appearance made Kevin want to throw away the flowers the moment he left her house. But thinking of the person he was going to secretly meet afterward, Kevin gripped the bouquet tightly.
Nora was one of Ginny’s followers. But unlike Ginny, she was a sentimental, kind, and affectionate good girl.
Kevin regifted the bouquet Mary had given him to Nora. Who would have thought that afterward, when Ginny went to provoke Mary, Mary asked Ginny about the bouquet’s whereabouts.
Fortunately, Nora was very clever. While Ginny was checking if her neighbor’s house had the bouquet, Nora slipped out the back door home and threw the bouquet hanging on the wall into the kitchen stove.
Ginny had many followers, so Nora’s brief disappearance didn’t catch her attention. By the time Ginny checked Nora’s house again, the bouquet had long turned to ashes in the stove.
Ginny found no evidence of her husband’s infidelity. Afterward, when Kevin heard Nora recount the events, he broke out in a cold sweat. The hands that had wanted to push Ginny away now stiffly rested on her waist.
“My dear, I’m truly happy that you worry about me like this. It’s just that I don’t want you to worry with me…”
Failing to grasp Kevin’s implication that “I don’t want to waste time talking to you,” Ginny stubbornly hugged her husband and coquettishly said, “It’s always better for two people to worry than one.”
Worried that rejecting Ginny again would arouse her suspicions, Kevin reluctantly hugged his wife back. He revealed his relationship with Lem Town’s town head and spoke of his conflict with his uncle.
Ginny slightly loosened her hold on her husband.
“…You mean your uncle Tobias is unwilling to share a cut with you?”
Seeing that his wife wasn’t angry about him hiding that his uncle was the notoriously stingy town head known far and wide, Kevin relaxed a lot.
He knew Ginny’s strong personality; if she discovered he had approached and pursued her only for the village head position, she would go mad and make a huge fuss with him, even possibly wanting a divorce.
Kevin still hadn’t obtained the steel seal symbolizing the village head’s authority from old Mr. Morgan, so from the national level, he wasn’t yet the official village head of Abe Village. Kevin couldn’t fall out with Ginny yet.
“Yes, dear.” His tone toward Ginny improved greatly as Kevin said, “The establishment of the Lem Mine brought many miners to Lem Town, and these miners need to eat and drink every day. I want to buy up food to sell in Lem Town, but my uncle wants to monopolize all the profits! He won’t allow me to do business in Lem Town! You know, Ginny, these miners each get ten pounds of wages every week! Ten pounds of wages!”
Ginny’s lips twitched. Hearing her husband talk about buying up food from the village to sell in Lem Town, she immediately thought of what Ye Tang had been doing these past few days.
Mary had traded wooden shoes for a lot of dried and wild meat; was this related to what Kevin said?
She had previously scorned things like wooden shoes and hadn’t thought of interfering with Mary. After all, not everyone could afford leather shoes like her; trading meat for wooden shoes was indeed a good deal without loss.
If she interfered with Mary, Mary wouldn’t lose, but those who couldn’t get wooden shoes would. Why would she do something that would idly erode her prestige?
However… this was something everyone in the village knew. How could Kevin not know?
Kevin was Abe Village’s village head. If he had cared even a little about the village, he should have known about Mary’s recent activities. If he knew about Mary’s activities, he wouldn’t be complaining about his uncle at a time like this but would go find trouble with Mary.
Rain or shine, Kevin went to the village head’s office every day to handle village affairs. If he knew nothing about even Mary’s activities, then what exactly did he handle in the village head’s office every day?
…And those words he just said… Had Kevin ever truly considered Abe Village or the villagers of Abe Village?
…
“Oh! Lang! Sing a song today too!”
A miner raised his wine toward Lang with a laugh, ending with a few whistles: “Your singing is just too great! We can’t get enough! Whee—!”
With one leading, the other miners joined in the jeers: “Sing! Sing! Our baritone!”
“Hahaha, although you’re a stinky man too! But indeed, no one around here sings more beautifully than you!”
“Whee! Lang! Our big star!”
The jeered Lang awkwardly looked toward Ye Tang, who was collecting pennies on one side while handing wine to the miners.
Ye Tang’s handcart stall had been in business for half a month. Dandelion coffee at half a penny per cup was only available at lunchtime, wine at two pennies only at dinnertime. Sandwiches and hamburgers were both five pennies, and miners often ordered two or three hamburgers or sandwiches per meal.
Delicious food plus a relaxed and leisurely environment had completely turned the miners into captives of Ye Tang’s stall. They ate at her stall every meal and even hoped she could sell breakfast at the mine.
Ye Tang refused such unreasonable demands.
The pickled vegetables were limited; if she didn’t make more, they would run out. If Ye Tang slacked off for a day and didn’t go to the forest in the early morning to gather wild vegetables, the refreshing, crisp pickled vegetables would immediately be out of stock.
Kneading dough, fermenting bread blanks, making beef patties mixed with pork, and egg yolk mayonnaise dedicated for hamburgers and sandwiches all took time.
The handcart’s capacity was limited, so Ye Tang couldn’t bring all the food and drinks for lunch and dinner at once. She could only bring the lunch items and drinks in the morning, return to Abe Village with Lang and Rest after lunchtime to prepare dinner, and then push the handcart loaded with dinner and wine to the Lem Mine when the mine was about to end work in the afternoon.
It was worth mentioning that Xiu never acted out his chuunibyou phase again after that. This little wolf cub didn’t say it aloud, but he had clearly taken Ye Tang’s words to heart.
Lately, he not only obediently chopped wood and started fires while Ye Tang and Lang served guests, prepared work, and silently cleaned up the dishes after Lang collected them. He also began asking Lang to teach him human language reading and writing.
Seeing his younger brother’s changes put Lang even more grateful to Ye Tang for saying those words.
Unknowingly, Lang had grown accustomed to placing Ye Tang above himself. He started getting used to her giving orders and seeking her help when pestered by the humans.
Meeting Lang’s pleading gaze at that moment, Ye Tang, who was pouring the pennies collected on the wooden tray into the small iron can on the handcart, smiled faintly and then said, “Everyone really likes hearing you sing, so just sing. I also want to hear the sequel to that last song.”
His fluffy ear tips twitched slightly when Ye Tang mentioned she wanted to hear the sequel. Unexpectedly, Ye Tang, who usually stood on his side, defected today. Lang sighed helplessly. He put the wooden tray and cups in his hands onto the handcart and sat down on a tree stump.
“I’ll only sing one verse today.”
He said that, but the jeering miners around him didn’t believe Lang would sing only one verse at all.
Everyone had noticed that this werewolf, who looked fierce and majestic, actually had an extremely good temper. Even if they got cheeky with him, he would only raise one eyebrow, cross his arms, and bare his teeth menacingly.
To be honest, none of the Lem Mine’s miners would have imagined that one day they would find a werewolf’s “grrr—” low growl “cute” instead of “scary.” But the fact was, because of Lang, the image of werewolves in the miners’ hearts had shifted from “monsters” to “humanoid wolves” with as much talent as body hair.
Ye Tang was indeed quite curious about the sequel to the song Lang sang in old Otto’s backyard. Usually, she was too busy to ask anyone and couldn’t recall the song anyway.
With so many people wanting to hear Lang sing today, and her wanting to know what happened after the beast made his first friend, she went along with it and stood on the miners’ side.
Lang’s singing voice rose melodiously. In the song, the beast was ecstatic about making a girl his one and only friend. But he soon discovered that the girl befriended him because she was blind.
The girl was born blind.
She couldn’t see the beast’s fluffy face, couldn’t see his large, long mouth, couldn’t see the huge fangs in his mouth, couldn’t see the long tail dragging behind him.
The beast thought in pain that the girl took him for a human, an ordinary boy, and that’s why she befriended him. But to continue this friendship, the beast was willing to play the role of a human boy.
The girl wanted to touch her friend’s face, to see what her friend looked like with her fingers. The beast, afraid of being discovered for his true appearance, refused.
The girl felt a bit disappointed, and the beast felt bad too. He tried many methods to disguise himself as a human, including shaving the fur off his face. However, facing himself in the mirror—even without fur on his face, still with that blood basin of a mouth—the beast finally realized: he would forever be a beast and could never become a human.
The beast cried again. Seeing him cry, the kind Tooth Fairy told him: he could hold the girl’s hand while wearing gloves, so the girl wouldn’t discover his monstrous claws.
Thus, the beast endured a thousand hardships for a pair of gloves. He was tricked into selling his fangs and long nails, and in the end, he only obtained a tattered glove.
But it was this glove that finally allowed the beast, who had had his nails pulled out, to dare to hold the girl’s hand…
After singing this segment, Lang finally opened his eyes. The miners in front of him, including the one who was drunk out of his mind, were all crying like dogs kicked out of their homes and freezing in the cold wind.
“Oh my god! What kind of despicable and vicious demon tricked the beast?! How could such a person even be called human?!”
“Damn it, Lang, you sing so well!”
“Don’t pull out the teeth or nails! It hurts so much!”
The drunken miners, reeking of booze, came howling and sobbing as they pounced over and hugged Lang. Lang was knocked off the wooden stump by them and tumbled around clumsily with the drunks.
The mute Xiu watched the whole time as his brother pushed away the teary-eyed miners who kept sticking to him. Humans truly showed him, day after day, with their actions, just how superficial his past understanding of them had been.
Did humans have a malicious side? Of course.
Did that make humans purely evil without any goodness? Not quite.
Humans felt disgust, fear, and awe toward werewolves. But toward “Lang” this werewolf, they were filled with affection, admiration, and… concern.
The more facets of humanity Xiu witnessed, the more he felt that the slogan “Kill all humans and reclaim the world for beastmen” was utterly terrifying. He, who had responded to that slogan, had nearly fallen from a werewolf with human feelings into a pure beast.
Fortunately, before he committed an irredeemable sin, someone had stopped him.
“What?”
Sensing Xiu’s burning gaze, Ye Tang turned back to look at him.
The young werewolf “hmph”ed and turned his head to the side, saying nothing. Only his tail swayed idly behind him.
…What was this about?
Unable to understand the complicated teenage heart of this puberty-stricken little wolf pup, Ye Tang—whose head was full of dancing little question marks—decided to let it be and leave the chuunibyou little wolf to his own devices.