By the time Ye'er woke, daylight had already filled the world outside the window.
He rubbed the space between his brows for a long while before remembering that after giving the female Zerg mental guidance the day before, dizziness had swept through his brain. He must have lost consciousness afterward.
But his body held none of the pain that should have come from overusing mental power. Instead, he felt more comfortable and satisfied than ever before.
Sensing something, Ye'er sat up on the hospital bed. With a thought, mental power that felt almost tangible gathered into a ball of light and bounced lively in his palm.
"My mental power got stronger…?"
He rarely used mental power, but even he knew that the small, clumsy amount from yesterday was what should have been normal.
Now it felt as though some invisible barrier had broken. The sensation of being separated by a layer had vanished, and abundant warmth flowed through all his limbs and bones.
Ye'er concentrated and tightened his hand. With a soft pop, the ball of light was squeezed apart into several smaller spheres.
He pinched each one in turn and still found nothing unusual.
At that moment, someone knocked on the ward door. A sub-female nurse peeked in. "Good morning, Your Excellency. How are you feeling?"
Ye'er came back to himself and casually waved the balls of light away. "Much better. Where is Doctor Xiuyisi?"
Xiuyisi was the doctor who had suggested mental guidance yesterday and was also the female Zerg's attending physician.
"Doctor Xiuyisi is in intensive care right now. Breakfast will be delivered shortly. Your Excellency can go find him after you've eaten."
"Understood. Thank you."
Ye'er got out of bed, picked up the neatly folded new clothes beside it, and went into the bathroom to wash.
Of the little light spheres he had completely forgotten, one bounced into the vase beside the bed.
A few seconds later, a slightly wilted lily slowly straightened its stem, while tender petals and leaves began growing anew.
*
Following his memory, Ye'er walked to yesterday's ward. When he opened the door, however, he found the curtains drawn around the bed where the female Zerg lay.
"Doctor?"
He called uncertainly. A bulge immediately appeared behind the curtain, then flattened again with remarkable speed.
Ye'er's brow twitched. His hand was already on the curtain, but he hesitated, wondering whether Xiuyisi might be examining something. "Doctor Xiuyisi?"
"Here, here."
The curtain was lifted from within. Xiuyisi's brown hair was disheveled, but his expression looked perfectly normal. "I was just examining some relatively private areas, so I closed the curtain."
"Private… areas?" Ye'er paused. "And what did the examination show?"
Something flickered in Xiuyisi's eyes. For some reason he paused before turning away and continuing, "Nothing is wrong. You can rest assured."
He lowered his head and flipped through the chart, deliberately changing the subject. "The female Zerg's condition has stabilized a little, but it's still not optimistic."
"There's nothing more the hospital can do. Does Your Excellency intend to take him with you?"
Ye'er looked at the female Zerg on the bed. His face was still pale, but his wounds had recovered somewhat. He no longer looked quite as terrible. At least Ye'er could be reasonably certain he would not die in the next second.
He was silent for a moment before asking, "If I don't take him, will the hospital still deal with him the way you described before?"
"Yes."
That was the attitude of the hospital—and of this whole society—toward female Zergs who no longer had "value." No one would waste resources saving them, nor offer unnecessary sympathy. At most, they might arrange a death that involved relatively little pain.
Cold and cruel.
Ye'er fell silent. Suddenly he remembered a slogan from an animal-rescue volunteer group in his previous life—
"Taking in stray animals is troublesome. Learn everything carefully before you do it. Once you decide to raise one, you can't give up halfway, because to them that only becomes another injury!"
He had originally only planned to give this female Zerg a hand, with no intention of living together long-term or taking him as a female attendant. But clearly his hand had only reached halfway. If he let go now, the female Zerg would still die.
"All right." Ye'er sighed lightly. "I'll take him with me."
Xiuyisi's brow lifted. He seemed relieved. "Fine. I'll prescribe some emergency medication later and explain a few precautions."
In the end, he prescribed an enormous pile of medicines.
Hemostatic drugs, fever medication, emergency medicine, sleeping aids… practically everything imaginable, even medicine for hair loss.
But comparing it with his experience raising cats and dogs in his previous life, all of it did seem necessary. Ye'er could only watch Xiuyisi's pen fly as he filled an entire page with prescriptions.
Ye'er glanced at his balance. Great. It was a full third lower than before he came to the hospital.
You have to pay to get a puppy neutered too, he thought coldly. At least raising a female Zerg saves me that expense.
"Your Excellency doesn't need to worry about carrying the medication home. The hospital will deliver it. We can deliver the female Zerg too, of course," Xiuyisi said with a smile.
"I've sent all the precautions to Your Excellency's optical terminal. If anything happens, contact me directly. I provide remote guidance free of charge."
"Got it."
Ye'er took the prescription and looked over it carefully, then added another line. "Buy an extra portion of the sleeping medication."
…
Ye'er messaged 015 while he was still on the way home and told it to wait at the door to help.
The hovercar stopped steadily outside. Ye'er opened the door and got out, gesturing toward the female Zerg lying in the back seat. 015's two mechanical arms extended with a series of clicks, lifting the female Zerg in a perfect bridal carry and bringing him inside.
"Thank you." Ye'er closed the vehicle door and nodded to the driver who had brought them back.
But the window hurriedly rolled down again. "W-wait, Your Excellency…"
Ye'er turned. "What is it?"
The female Zerg's face flushed red. After stammering for a while, he said, "Before… before, I didn't understand what had happened and I misunderstood you. I'm really sorry!"
Ye'er gave him another look and realized he was the worker who had complained that Ye'er had abused the female Zerg while printing his bills.
"It's fine. Don't take it to heart." Catching the female Zerg's embarrassed expression from the corner of his eye, Ye'er curved his eyes and spoke gently.
The female Zerg, who had already been awkward, froze completely. Then his eyes slowly widened.
He was struck motionless by the male Zerg's profile and that single glance. It took him quite a while to recover. The next second, his face smashed straight into the control panel—
Aaaaaah His Excellency the male Zerg smiled at me! He even spoke gently to comfort me!!
Aaaaaah His Excellency is so beautiful, and he's way too polite! How am I supposed to apologize normally after that aaaaaaah!!!
The repeated banging drew curious looks from passing Zergs. It took the female Zerg a long time to calm down. With his forehead red all over, he drove away reluctantly.
*
The moment Ye'er entered the house, he saw that a giant cocoon had sprouted on the sofa.
The female Zerg was tall and broad. Curled up on the sofa like this, he resembled a snow leopard desperately trying to squeeze into a puppy's bed, looking unbearably cramped. The thick quilt covering him made the sofa seem even smaller.
But this apartment had been assigned by Ye'er's workplace and only had one bedroom. There was nowhere else to put the female Zerg, so Ye'er had layered thick quilts over the sofa and temporarily turned it into a bed.
"The moment I put him down, he curled up… I didn't have time to hold him in place."
A crying face appeared on the robot's screen. It was clearly guilty over failing to complete its task.
Xiuyisi had said the female Zerg's main injuries were in his back and legs, so he would instinctively curl up. But that could worsen his injuries, and someone needed to keep an eye on him.
"It's fine. I'll hold him down." Ye'er handed his coat to 015 and rolled up his sleeves.
Come to think of it, while they were at the hospital, all kinds of treatments had been necessary and Xiuyisi had always been nearby. Ye'er had never truly been alone in a room with the female Zerg.
The thought flashed through his mind. Before he could examine it, his hand had already touched the surface of the quilt.
A strange warmth seeped through the blanket into his fingertips, unmistakably the sensation of a living creature.
Breathing, warm-bodied, and in a certain sense, an adult intelligent being just like him.
Ye'er suddenly froze.
That feeling was excessively unfamiliar, both in his previous life and this one.
After a long moment, his fingers tightened slightly. Hesitantly, he shook the bundle of quilt. "Hey… you…"
Ye'er was not loud, but strangely, a crack opened in the tightly curled cocoon. He took the opportunity to lift the blanket—
The female Zerg's soft white hair had been rubbed into disarray. His face was turned into the blanket so that only a small portion of his handsome, sharply defined profile showed. His lips were tightly pressed together, and his lashes trembled uneasily.
His breathing was unsteady, as though he was enduring pain, but the life in him remained vivid and unmistakable, like an injured snow leopard temporarily resting.
…His presence was overwhelming.
Ye'er's fingers tightened around the blanket while he waited for the numbness along his spine to fade.
During an emergency, he had not felt much of anything. But bringing the female Zerg home and settling him on the sofa was somehow too much. Ye'er felt like a cat whose territory had been invaded by a wild beast, every hair on his body ready to stand on end.
While he stared blankly, the female Zerg, perhaps because his wounds hurt, shifted from a curled position to lying flat.
But the sofa was tiny. When he turned over, he moved almost directly against Ye'er. The heat of his body and the rustle of movement passed through the quilt, and for one dazed moment Ye'er felt as though a snow leopard had rubbed against him, sending a subtle shiver up from his waist and abdomen.
His Adam's apple moved. The quilt slid from his palm and fell over the female Zerg's head and body, covering him completely.
"…"
Ye'er sat beside the sofa and stared at 015. 015 stared back.
"What do we do now?" 015 looked up at him, plainly at a loss over the new member of the household. "Um… do we just leave him alone?"
"I don't know either." Ye'er looked blank and answered instinctively, "What do you think we should do with him?"
That question was far too difficult for a little robot whose thinking module was barely larger than a speck, so it connected to the Star Network and appealed to the broad masses of netizens.
"Searching the Star Network… What should one do after obtaining a female slave? How should one treat a poor little female Zerg picked up off the street? A handsome female slave has newly joined the household; what specific things should be done…?"
Countless answers flashed rapidly across the small screen. 015 eventually condensed them into—
"Check his academic credentials, supermarket him, heavy-cream him, olive him, admire the way he cries, make him carry eggs and lay eggs, then keep stir-frying him day and night!"
It delivered the summary with passionate conviction and ringing certainty.
The room fell silent.
"…"
Ye'er covered the lower half of his face. Only after a long while did he manage, with difficulty, "…You should probably go online less from now on. And especially make sure the dark web doesn't hack your program."
"Okay." Although 015 did not understand why, it obediently disconnected from the network.
In the end, Ye'er took a deep breath and decided they should simply continue with normal life and let things develop naturally. Whatever needed to be discussed could wait until the female Zerg woke up.
After sending 015 off to charge, he activated the optical terminal on his wrist. Ninety-nine-plus messages raced upward with a succession of beeps.
[Why did Your Excellency take leave? Are you sick? May I come visit you? [smile][flowers]]
[Aaaaaah, adorable, wonderful, kind, clean, pure Your Excellency the male Zerg!!! I like you so much aaaaaaaah please allow me to express my boundless love and admiration!!!]
[Did Your Excellency catch a cold by accident? I have cold medicine imported from the Capital Planet. If you need it, just reply and I'll bring it over immediately! [heart]]
At a glance, the entire screen was full of "Your Excellency, Your Excellency." Mixed among the ordinary greetings were shrieking-chicken-style declarations of excitement that made Ye'er's head ache.
He scrolled back to the original leave-request page, reassured the worried library director that he was safe, then sent that message to everyone at once. Before his communications could explode again, he enabled Do Not Disturb and switched to the shopping page.
At the moment, the female Zerg had only one hospital gown. If that got washed, he would have to walk around naked. Ye'er's own clothes were too small, so he urgently needed to buy two sets to tide him over.
But when he searched for female Zerg clothing, page after page showed nothing but military uniforms or camouflage, with the occasional dress shirt and suit trousers mixed in. There were almost no comfortable casual styles. After considerable searching he finally found a few sets, but the fabric was extremely rough.
Ye'er looked for a long time without finding a single suitable set. Helpless and amused, he clicked his tongue. "Might as well buy a length of cloth and wrap him in it like an ancient Greek Zerg."
"Silk is soft and comfortable. It wouldn't press on the wounds or interfere with normal movement at all, and there'd be no need to worry about whether the size fits. You can adjust it for any body size…"
He had only said it casually, but the more he spoke, the more suitable it sounded. His expression turned strange and his voice trailed off.
An image appeared in his mind of the female Zerg wearing nothing but a piece of cloth. Soft white hair hanging over his brows, handsome face like a sun god's, his soft, full body wrapped in thin fabric.
He was tall, so long calves and ankles would show beneath the cloth, every line exactly where it ought to be.
Yet unlike the full honey-colored body, his expression would remain stern and solemn, like an exalted archangel who nevertheless worked with tireless diligence. The sheer seriousness of him would somehow leak a vigorous sensuality.
…What am I thinking?
"…"
Ye'er pressed a fist to his lips, trying to ease the indescribable embarrassment.
Author's Note:
Ye'er, who absolutely loves imagining things: Sexy… Oh my god, what am I thinking… Cute… No, stop thinking right now. (pained-expression.jpg)
I'm suddenly wondering whether I wrote this too plainly? Does it read like a dry account of events…? (cat universe) No, I have to keep my objective in mind at all times: gently [censored], reasonably [censored], [censored]—
