Chapter 11
When Anxius rushed over, Yomi was standing on top of a bucket. His tiny body swayed back and forth, one hand bracing against the edge of the high platform while the other carefully stroked that “big cat head.” His slender ankles trembled faintly, as if he were about to fall any second…
Anxius swept Yomi straight into his arms in one motion.
Like holding an exquisite doll, he completely imprisoned Yomi in his embrace. Yomi’s long legs kicked back and forth, and he could not move at all.
He was startled for only a second before immediately pointing at the platform and saying, “Mimi seems to be stuck in that crack!”
At that moment, Karl hurried over, wiping at his nosebleed as he explained anxiously, “Mr. Yomi, that’s a surveillance device styled after a realistic pet. It’s not a real cat, so there’s no need to worry… Sorry, I forgot to explain that to you.”
Yomi immediately looked toward the “cat.” Now that his field of vision was much broader, he quickly spotted part of the wires behind the cat’s head.
…It really was a surveillance device!
Yomi muttered awkwardly, “I see.”
Before coming here, he really had not done enough research.
But in Karl’s eyes, the slightly flushed Yomi looked rather timid and shy. Just as he was about to step forward and comfort the poor little thing, His Highness Anxius in front of him bent down and set Yomi on the floor.
Karl: “?”
The monster walked over and turned off the still-rotating surveillance device, then raised a hand and smashed the platform into pieces with a single punch.
Karl: “…”
That scene felt far too familiar.
In an instant, an image came to mind of a child falling down, and the parent pounding the floor while saying the floor was bad.
Yomi only heard a loud crash. Before he could even see what had happened over there, Anxius had already bent down and picked him back up again.
Karl wiped his sweat and quickly explained, “It’s all right. His Highness Anxius simply wanted to renovate this corridor.”
Yomi let out an astonished “Oh,” then obediently stayed in Anxius’s arms.
After he finished eating the little cake, Anxius carried him upstairs and entered one of the bedrooms.
The bedroom was exceptionally large, but the space had been divided neatly into two halves. The outer half was obviously the master bedroom. The furniture and decor were all extremely classical, with every detail highlighting an atmosphere of strictness and dignity. There were even documents laid out on the table. It was clearly Anxius’s bedroom. But the inner half… felt a little too out of place.
Pointing at the pink little castle there, Karl introduced it to him in a serious tone. “Mr. Yomi, that is your room. From now on, you and His Highness Anxius will be neighbors.”
Yomi: “…”
Anxius gently put him down on the floor and carefully watched his face, as if judging whether or not he was satisfied.
While Yomi was still standing there dumbfounded, Karl had already brought over his small suitcase. “This is your luggage.”
Taking his own little suitcase in a daze, Yomi instinctively walked forward. He pushed open the tiny door and stepped inside the castle, looked around for a while, set the suitcase down, then walked into the largest room inside.
Every kind of furniture one could want was there. The wardrobe was full of tiny clothes in sizes that suited him, and there was even miniature fitness equipment…
Yomi was dazzled by everything. Then, following Karl’s instructions from outside, he went up to the second floor of the little castle. Inside was a small study. He leaned his head out from the study window, and from there he could see Anxius and Karl outside, both staring fixedly in this direction.
Yomi drew in a breath and could not help exclaiming, “Inside… it’s really so big!”
“…”
Karl raised a hand and shoved the tissue in his nostrils in even harder.
Somewhere Yomi could not see, the monster’s wings behind his back were trembling.
Taking advantage of the Crown Prince’s distraction, Karl hurriedly used his optical brain to snap a photo of the scene. Then he opened the new group chat he had only created today and sent the picture into it.
[Public-Funded Mimi Viewing Group (Empire’s Little Darling Related Work)]
Karl: [Image] Working hard today as well.
A few seconds later, the group chat was flooded wall-to-wall with exclamation marks.
…
After touring his “staff dormitory,” Yomi was taken by Anxius to the screening room to watch a movie.
When Karl, the “friendly senior,” left, Yomi felt an indescribable kind of nervousness. After all, he was now alone with a monster. It was impossible not to be afraid at all. His two hands rested on his knees, clenched tightly.
Anxius lowered his eyes and looked at him for a moment, then got up and began rummaging through the cabinet over there.
Just as Yomi pressed his lips together and did not dare look, something suddenly covered his upper body.
The enormous monster had taken out a small white shawl. With his claws tucked away, he wrapped it around Yomi’s shoulders, then adjusted the air conditioning to make it a little less cold.
He thought Yomi was cold.
Yomi was not cold. But clutching the blanket, his sense of security rose for no reason at all, and the tension in his heart eased by quite a bit too.
On the screen, a documentary film about humans was playing.
Once he relaxed, Yomi started watching seriously.
He had seen quite a few animal documentaries in his life, but this was his first time ever watching a documentary about humans.
The production quality of this documentary was excellent. The illustrations and CGI about humans were so realistic that even Yomi, who was himself a human, did not feel that anything was off.
The narration said that ten thousand years ago, a great number of humans had once lived on Snar Star. Later, as the planet’s geomagnetic field changed, they gradually went extinct. Nowadays, if the people of Snar Star wanted to see humans, they could only reconstruct a complete human form through archaeological fossils…
At that moment, the expert on the screen was speaking at length about the various differences between humans and Snarans.
Yomi’s expression grew solemn.
He thought of dinosaur documentaries…
And at that thought, a sudden idea came to him: to the people of Snar Star, was he basically a dinosaur?
As the documentary neared its end, the host suddenly said, “There’s one question I’m personally extremely curious about. Since we have the chance today, I’d like to ask Professor Veer.”
“Please.”
“Among humans, would there also have been gay people?”
“…”
The monster beside him stiffened.
Yomi turned his head just in time to see him staring coldly at that expert.
The expert spread his hands. “I’m very sorry, but that is also something we don’t know.”
The monster’s expression seemed to turn colder.
The host asked again, “Then in the future, is it possible that we might see humans?”
The expert chuckled. “You truly are a host with a childlike sense of wonder. I think in future dreams, that should be possible.”
Host: “…”
Yomi was getting a little sleepy from watching, but the thought that this was his very first day at work kept him from relaxing. He forced his eyes wide open, trying hard to perform well.
But drowsiness was something he simply could not control. Yomi’s eyes opened wide, then narrowed, opened wide again, then narrowed once more… He had no idea at all when exactly he fell asleep.
It was only when his body vaguely sensed that something around him had changed that he hazily opened his eyes a crack.
In his blurry vision, a pair of huge claws placed him on the bed and carefully tucked the blanket over him.
Yomi was half-awake and half-asleep, his mind not yet fully clear. But the little strength of will he had left made him hum softly and try to get up.
Then, from outside, came a voice—cold in quality, yet carrying a faint trace of helpless coaxing as it soothed him to sleep:
“…Good afternoon, good afternoon… Mimi… good afternoon…”
His heavy eyelids gradually fell shut, and Yomi drifted off to sleep in peace.
During the hour before Yomi woke from his nap, Anxius did not leave the little castle for even a single step.
He was like a demon coveting treasure, and also like a hidden guardian lurking in the shadows. Bent at the waist, back slightly hunched, he stared at that tiny window with his pair of golden eyes without blinking once.
Inside the window, Yomi slowly woke from his nap.
He was still muddled with sleep. When he crawled up, he looked a little dazed, his hair all tousled and his eyes blank.
Yomi tilted his head back. Only after quite a while did he finally recognize that this was his own bedroom…
Outside the little castle.
Anxius’s gaze passed through the glass of the window. He watched as Yomi rubbed his eyes, combed his hair with his fingers, then slowly opened his optical brain and slowly said into the camera, “I have gotten out of bed. I feel well.”
After recording it, he placed the video into an album called Work Unit Experiment Records.
Before that clip were already countless videos Yomi had secretly recorded while no one was around. Every single one of them was extremely professional:
[I have started work. I feel well.]
[I have eaten. I feel well.]
[I have been held. I feel well.]
