Chapter 2
Yomi made it home before dark.
Public safety in the capital’s residential district was very good, and serious crimes at night were rare. But Yomi was currently undocumented, and his body was simply too small. Even if he did not run into any bad people, he was still afraid that some huge monster passerby might fail to notice him and accidentally step on him.
As for the household registration issue, Yomi had already carefully researched it earlier on Lynn’s light-brain.
The various regions of Sna Planet were all quite complicated, with all kinds of monsters living there. Although they shared human-like habits in daily life, they generally were not managed under one unified system.
Aside from the largest main urban area, namely the capital, there were also Snaran living in the mountains, deserts, ice fields… and even lava regions.
And Lynn had mistakenly assumed that the Black Miasma Wasteland, where Yomi had previously been, was the harshest environment of all, a place where almost no Snaran lived.
Snaran from different regions had enormous differences in both lifestyle and appearance.
Generally speaking, Snaran from outside the main urban districts would not come to live in the capital. Only if their homeland had been destroyed, or if they could no longer survive there, would they be allowed to register for household status after working in the capital for a full month.
Yomi had great confidence in himself. Even though he kept changing jobs, he had already worked for a whole week!
Panting, he walked to the front of his little house, locked the handcart together with the wooden house, then carried the bag, lunch box, and green jujube from the cart back inside.
The green jujube was a gift from Lynn. It was almost half the size of Yomi’s head.
Yomi usually avoided Snaran when eating, but it was too stuffy inside the house. Now that it was dark, eating outside did not make him worry too much about being discovered.
Still, just in case, he found a hat and put it on.
He sat on the wooden platform outside the hut and ate heartily. The refreshing fragrance drifting over from the flowerbed was like natural perfume.
As he ate, he gradually sensed a familiar gaze. Yomi slowly raised his head, and sure enough, he saw a huge head sticking out from the window of the tall building.
The girl had two tiger ears, and her blue eyes were fixed tightly on him. “Mimi… can I come down and hold you?”
It was Lili, the daughter of the owner of this house.
Yomi’s wooden house had originally been meant to be transported to the slum where Lynn lived. But when he passed by this house, he had unexpectedly seen an electronic notice at the gate recruiting a security guard.
Yomi had applied. But standing in front of the huge and burly homeowner with his tiny little body, he had been rejected without the slightest surprise.
The turning point had been Lili. The moment Lili first saw Yomi, she was stunned. At first, she even thought her parents had bought her a bionic doll. No matter how they explained it, she insisted that Yomi stay.
Seeing their dilemma, Yomi had suggested, “I don’t need to live in the guard booth. My house is very small. You can just place it behind the flowerbed. Let me work for a while on a trial basis first.”
“…”
How could Lili’s parents dare let him try? This tiny little thing probably could not even beat a wild cat. But ever since their daughter had transferred schools, she had been gloomy the whole time. This was the first time she had shown so much interest in an outsider… For the sake of making their daughter happy, they had no choice but to let Yomi place his wooden house in the yard for a temporary stay, while they hired another guard.
That was how Yomi’s wooden house finally settled down. Since it was inside a Sna family’s yard, at least he would not be driven away. And now that a new jackal security guard had arrived, it was even safer.
“Mimi!” Lili had already run downstairs, speaking in an extremely childlike tone. “The moment you start eating, your weakness shows right away! So fun… can I feed you?”
“…I can eat by myself.” Yomi did not know whether it was just his imagination, but this child seemed to be treating him like a pet… He lowered his head and continued eating.
Lili still did not leave. She crouched beside him, watching with full concentration as he ate in tiny bites, giggling from time to time. “Mimi…”
Her laughter gave Yomi goosebumps. The moment he finished his boxed meal, he quickly took out the green jujube, washed it, cut it in half, and handed one half to Lili. “It’s dark already. You should go back inside.”
Lili bit through half the jujube in one mouthful, then crouched there watching him scoop out the other half with a spoon. Her ears trembled excitedly. “So cute!”
Only after Yomi had finished the jujube did Lili finally return indoors reluctantly.
He let out a sigh of relief, borrowed hot water from Lili’s house, took a speedy bath, then returned to his hut, locked the door, and studied the newly bought alarm wristband under the light.
The wristband came with an account that could store star coins. He planned to deposit all his cash into it tomorrow.
Making money was exhausting, but Yomi was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was able to save money more easily than the local Snaran. At the moment, he had no expenses for rent or clothing, and as for food, every time he only needed to buy the smallest portion, which was enough to last him at least two meals!
Yomi put on the alarm wristband. It was already the smallest size sold in that store, but it was still a bit too large. He modified the strap himself, and only then did it stop hanging so loosely.
The alarm wristband was linked to Lynn’s light-brain. If anything happened, all Yomi had to do was press the alarm button, and the wristband would automatically call the authorities and urgently send his location to Lynn’s device, making it easier for Lynn to find him immediately.
Before going to sleep, Yomi took out the work notebook given to him by the furniture factory and wrote down the order of priorities for his struggle to settle down on Sna Planet:
- Monster horns
- Light-brain
- Rent a house
- Buy a house…
Once he had a house of his own, then Yomi, wearing monster horns, would truly become one of the people here.
At daybreak the next morning, Yomi first took his wallet and went to deposit his money.
Looking at the amount displayed on the screen, he felt full of accomplishment. After coming out, he pulled out his map and headed for the high-end restaurant mentioned on yesterday’s electronic flyer, preparing for the interview.
That restaurant was located in the bustling part of the city, and Yomi had never been there before. He looked at the map while asking for directions, and while he was standing at a narrow intersection trying to figure out which way to go, a huge dark shadow suddenly fell over him without warning.
Yomi hesitated and looked up.
Right in front of him was an enormously large Snaran walking toward him. Most importantly, this Snaran had not the slightest trace of human appearance. His body was twisted, his skin was mottled brown, and compared with the beast-like appearances of most Snaran, this one looked more like the terrifying monsters Yomi had once seen in cartoon shows…
This was a completely monstrous-form Snaran!
For a moment, Yomi forgot to move and froze in place.
The Snaran on the street hurriedly stepped aside.
With a single step, the monster had already reached Yomi.
Yomi trembled slightly in fear. He thought this monster had singled him out as the smallest one in the crowd and had come to bully him.
Yomi hesitantly looked at the alarm wristband. But through the reflective surface of the band, he saw an equally trembling monster face above him.
“…”
Before he could recover, he heard the monster say, “Your human form is so beautiful… Do you think it’s funny that I look disabled? Is that why you deliberately blocked my way?”
Yomi froze. Only then did he realize that the intersection was very narrow. If he did not move aside, the monster could only get past by stepping over him… He hurriedly moved away. “I’m sorry!”
At that moment, a bicycle speeding toward them braked sharply beside him. Two tentacles shot out with a whoosh and lifted Yomi straight onto the back seat. Lynn called out to the monster, “He was spacing out just now. He absolutely did not mean to look down on you!”
The monster silently walked away.
Lynn carried Yomi off on the bicycle and started riding again. “I knew you’d get lost. I’d better take you to the interview myself!”
Yomi said, “But you still have work…”
Lynn replied, “There’s still an hour left. We have time!”
Yomi said thank you, then asked softly, “That person just now… where exactly was he disabled?”
He had looked like a frightening monster, yes, but he could clearly walk, speak, and see…
Lynn paused, shocked. “Mimi, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a disabled Snaran before?”
Yomi said nothing.
Lynn laughed. “So you really did grow up alone in the wilderness… Mimi, even the weakest Snaran is born with the ability to transform into human form. If a Snaran is completely unable to transform, whether because of a congenital illness or an injury later in life, here, that counts as a disability.”
Hearing it explained that way, Yomi understood a little better, but he still did not quite get it. “Even if they can’t transform, it wouldn’t affect daily life, would it?”
Lynn said, “How could it not? Disabled Snaran get rejected from many jobs that require a human appearance. That’s why there’s business in the underground black market for making and selling human-skin suits… But fake is fake, after all. Snaran who cannot transform have a hard time finding a mate.”
Yomi lowered his head in thought. In a way, he was very similar to the disabled Snaran.
As the only human in this world, he was destined never to have a mate for the rest of his life.
