Chapter 49
With more supplies in the house now, they needed a proper storeroom to sort and store everything.
Meikai and Harvey had both done business before and were the best at organizing warehouses. The two of them only needed one look at the supplies before spending a single day clearing out one of the buildings near the villa. There they stored less valuable items such as seeds and various tools, while the rest of the food and anything important still had to be kept inside the villa.
Once a windless stretch of good weather arrived, Yomi led everyone in renovating the farm.
Truthfully, he himself was not especially skilled at things like planting. Fortunately, he had downloaded some fairly professional videos at the market internet café in advance. They explained very carefully what to plant in which season, how to grow vegetables, how to prevent pests, and so on.
Before they started, Yomi first played the videos for everyone. After watching, they also consulted Yesi and Linda, who were relatively familiar with local conditions. In the end, they decided to first clear some land and plant radishes, napa cabbage, and chives.
Yomi wanted chive pockets, napa cabbage stewed with glass noodles, and radish pork soup…
The farmland on the property was very large. Yomi chose a plot close to the house to turn into a vegetable patch. After that came the division of labor.
At the moment, there was no hoe in the farmhouse suitable for Yomi to use, so he took charge of sowing seeds. Meikai and Harvey built the fencing, while everyone else hoed the soil.
With many hands working together, things moved quickly. By the end of a single day, a brand-new vegetable patch had appeared. Different vegetables were planted in different sections, adding a fresh trace of life to the desolate farm.
There were also a few apple trees on the farm. Ever since Yomi learned they were apple trees, he would go over from time to time and touch their trunks, as though he were giving them strength. He looked forward to the season when they would bear big apples.
After learning about this, Anxius asked Yesi to contact nearby farmers and buy some fruit tree saplings to plant. As for the apple trees already on the farm… in truth, they only flowered and never bore fruit. They were merely decorative, there to make the farm look nicer.
Yomi knew nothing of that. The next day, when he saw Yesi bringing several farmers over to plant saplings, he was thrilled. First there had been the vegetable garden, and now there was even a little orchard. The farm really was gaining more and more assets.
In the course of renovating the farm, not only Yomi but Lynn and the others too developed an indescribable sense of accomplishment toward this place that changed day by day.
Every blade of grass and every tree carried the mark of their labor.
Time passed very quickly. One month later, Karl’s injuries had basically healed. After resting for so long and watching a group of young men bustle around behind Yomi every day, he had long since wanted to join the farm team. Now that Yesi had finally given permission for him to move around, all the pent-up energy he had been holding in was poured into the vegetable patch. He worked harder than anyone at weeding and fertilizing.
At the same time, Anxius was finally able to remove all those bandages completely and show his real face.
The moment Yomi learned the news, he stood anxiously outside the bathroom door waiting.
He had never seen Anxius changing his bandages, so he had always imagined the other man peeling them off in some bloody, terrifying state… and even if there were no blood, it still had to be extremely uncomfortable.
Inside the bathroom, after finishing his final medicinal bath, Anxius threw all the bandages into the trash, got dressed, turned the handle, and walked straight out.
Yomi had been pacing back and forth in the bedroom. Hearing the door open, he turned around at once, and the worry on his face was quickly replaced by shock.
The terrifying face, the body full of scars—every image Yomi had imagined was nowhere to be seen.
Anxius’s human form now looked no different at all from the crown prince Yomi remembered. It was nothing like the complete change of appearance he had expected…
Yomi had already prepared himself to see a totally unfamiliar face. Once he recovered from the shock, he rushed over in delight and looked up at him. “Nothing changed—the surgery was a huge success! Anxius, congratulations!”
Naturally, there was no need to mention the matter of his smaller body. Everyone already knew.
How could a Yomi who was over 1.7 meters tall possibly think a 1.9-meter-plus Anxius was short?
“You’re not short at all!” Yomi circled around the dazed man, seemingly trying to give him confidence through the force of his own height… Anxius’s human body had shrunk proportionally. His original form and human form had both been over four meters tall before, and although his current human form was only around 1.9 meters, if one ignored the demonic horns on top of his head, he simply looked like a tall human. There was nothing strange about him at all.
Anxius stared fixedly at Yomi. At this moment, even his tightly held lips could not hide his delight.
He truly did not care in the slightest about the change in his size. But seeing Yomi circle around him, he felt as though he could not even move anymore, with only his eyes following Yomi’s figure.
Once they went outside, the others also saw Anxius’s human form. They were surprised, yes, but not by much. After all, everyone already knew what the crown prince’s human appearance had originally been like. When they had imagined the human shape hidden beneath the bandages before, they had all imagined the crown prince’s face. If a completely unfamiliar human had walked out instead, that would have frightened them.
As for height, their thoughts were the same as Yomi’s. None of them thought Anxius was short at all. This came from the sharp, commanding aura that clung to him as a ruler. Just one look or one sentence from him was enough to make people forget that his human body had become smaller. In any case, no matter how much smaller he had become, none of them would ever associate Anxius with the word cute.
Seeing Anxius’s brand-new human form, Lynn instinctively glanced at smiling Yomi beside him and could not help reflecting inwardly: things like aura really were strange. Even if one day Yomi turned into a giant, Lynn would still think he was the cutest little thing in the world.
But aside from that thought, Lynn also felt a complicated emotion he could not quite put into words.
He knew that after being gravely injured and disabled, Anxius had lost the ability to assume human form. And now that Anxius’s human form had reappeared, it meant that the old belief on Snar Star—that once disabled, a person could never again have a human form—had become a thing of the past. The one and only person to successfully perform such a human-form restoration surgery was now living in the same house as him.
A surge of heat rushed through Lynn’s heart.
Growing up in the slums, what Lynn had feared most since childhood was getting sick and having to see a doctor. Because of that, he had always dreamed of becoming a doctor himself, but with no parents and no support, where would he ever have had the means to study? Being able to keep himself alive had already been good enough… But now things were different. He no longer had to run himself ragged just to survive. Even though they were on Junk Star, life now was very stable. H-he really did have the spare energy to study again…
But would Yesi be willing to teach him? And would it not be inappropriate to ask him to sacrifice his own time? To be honest, here he really only had a deep connection with Yomi. As for everyone else… if he had to compare it to something, they were more like factory dorm roommates who had been forcibly assigned to the same room. At the moment, they were only at the level of being friendly and familiar… How could he possibly bring himself to ask?
Lynn stole a glance at Yesi. In his eyes there was eager admiration, along with a pitiful fear of being rejected.
Yesi, however, did not notice Lynn’s strange mood at all. He was entirely focused on recording the current measurements of Anxius’s human form.
At lunch, Yomi noticed that Lynn seemed distracted.
Most of the time Lynn was carefree and openhearted, and very rarely like this. Yomi thought he might be homesick, so after eating he dragged him outside for a walk and a chat.
After talking about random things for a while and noticing Lynn drift off several times, Yomi became even more certain of his guess. He asked softly, “Lynn, are you missing Snar Star?”
The standard of living here was nowhere near as good as it was on Snar Star, and before leaving, Lynn had only just received a promotion too.
Yomi had started to regret pulling Lynn aboard the ship before they left.
“Huh?” Lynn was startled, but quickly realized why Yomi was asking. He immediately shook his head. “I never had a home on Snar Star in the first place, so how could I be homesick? But this place… this place really does feel like a home. Linda is like a mother, Yesi is like a father, and all of you are like my brothers and sisters…”
“But there aren’t any sisters,” Yomi could not help correcting him.
“…” Choked speechless for a moment, Lynn shot him a look, utterly helpless with him. “Then you can fill the role of the younger sister.”
Yomi blushed. Leaning closer, he asked, “Then what’s really wrong? Can you tell me?”
The topic looped right back around. Looking up at the wide sky, Lynn hesitated for a while before finally telling his best friend what was on his mind.
“So that’s it…” Yomi had not expected that Lynn wanted to study medicine under Yesi. After blanking out for a moment, he immediately said, “Wait here. I’ll go ask him!” Then he turned and ran off to find Yesi.
Yesi was in the small sitting room organizing his medicine chest. When Yomi arrived, there just happened to be no one else around.
“Yesi,” Yomi said, picking up a rag and wiping away dust that did not exist on the table, awkwardly forcing an opening line. “What are we having for dinner?”
Yesi gave him a puzzled glance, saw the unnatural stiffness in the little one’s movements, and smiled. “What is it you want?”
Caught out, Yomi froze, drooped a little, and asked, “Your medical skills are so good… have you ever thought about taking on a student?”
At that, Yesi was startled. He had never expected Yomi to ask him such a question, and he immediately started sizing him up. This little one wanted to study medicine? But if he ever had to perform surgery in the future, he would need an assistant just to lift him up… Imagining that absurdly funny scene, Yesi kept a straight face and continued, “To tell the truth, I originally intended to pass my medical skills on to Arlo, but unfortunately Arlo has absolutely no interest in medicine, and Linda and I never wanted to force him… As for taking students, as you know, we lived on Junk Star for many years and only recently returned to Snar Star to perform His Highness Anxius’s human-form surgery. Before the surgery succeeded, naturally I wouldn’t have considered such a question. Now it’s something I can think about, but of course, it also depends on whether the other person has the resolve to endure hardship…” He was probing. If Yomi really wanted to study medicine, he would fulfill his duty as a teacher. But until now, he had never felt that Yomi showed any interest in what he did.
Before Yomi could say anything, a hurried voice suddenly came from behind him: “I-I do! I’ve endured every kind of hardship in the slums. Compared to that, the hardships of studying don’t count as hardship at all!”
“Lynn?” Yomi turned.
Lynn clenched his fists hard. He nodded gratefully to the delighted Yomi. “Yomi, thank you… but for something like this, I think I should say it myself.”
Hearing the exchange, Yesi instantly understood. Yomi had come here to ask on Lynn’s behalf.
Letting out a breath of relief, Yesi walked over to Lynn. He carefully looked over this flushed young man, then turned his gaze to Lynn’s many tentacles… Those tentacles really were made for surgery. It felt like one person could practically handle an entire operating room alone.
Completely unaware of what Yesi was thinking, Lynn was incredibly nervous. He was only a little over two meters tall—would Yesi reject him because of that? Just as he was thinking this, one of his tentacles was suddenly lifted. Yesi asked, “Can you control all of these tentacles flexibly?”
“Yes…” Lynn was confused. “W-will they interfere with surgery?”
That made Yesi laugh so hard he could hardly stop. Just as Lynn and Yomi exchanged baffled looks, Yesi closed the medicine chest and said, “Then from today on, call me teacher.” Taking on an apprentice had always been in his plans. If his medical knowledge were ever lost, he would find it deeply regrettable.
For a long moment, Lynn did not react at all, as if unable to believe things had gone this smoothly. It was Yomi who reminded him, “Lynn, your teacher’s gone.”
Only then did Lynn snap out of it like someone waking from a dream. Wiping away tears he had not even noticed falling, he excitedly lifted Yomi into the air, spun him around once, set him down gently, and hurried after Yesi. “Teacher! Thank you, teacher!”
“…”
Dinner that evening was especially rich, and Lynn had made all of it. In his words, this was his ceremony feast for entering the school.
Now everyone knew that Yesi had taken on a student. Arlo was the happiest of all. From now on, his parents finally would not be endlessly trying to fill his head with medical knowledge anymore.
Lynn, just work hard and study—do my share too while you’re at it!
Linda was also very pleased with the new title of teacher’s wife. It gave her the feeling that she and her husband had opened a little school together.
Everyone was happy.
Except Anxius.
But Anxius’s unhappiness was not directed at Lynn. It was because Yomi was planning to stop sharing his room.
Yomi really was preparing to move out. After all, Anxius had now recovered, so there was no longer any reason for him to stay and take care of him. Although a big reason he had kept sleeping here was because he had grown greedy for that wonderfully warm bed, he had at least been serving the practical purpose of accompanying a patient. Now that there was no longer a patient, he had decided to pack up his bedding and go.
There were enough bedrooms in the villa, but at night wild animal roars could often be heard outside, and Yomi did not dare sleep alone. Even knowing the beasts could not get into the house, it was like choosing a seat at school—you would still avoid the one right under the fan. Yomi felt much safer sharing a room with a companion.
While folding up his bedding, Yomi had already decided that later he would ask Lynn whether they could sleep together.
When Anxius returned to the room, what he saw was Yomi folding the quilt into a neat square and bundling up a pile of clothes in the bedsheet, looking exactly like someone about to leave home on a long journey.
“…”
His footsteps halted at the doorway.
Seeing him, Yomi smiled and patted at his sleeves as he prepared to head out, but Anxius stepped forward and blocked him. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to talk it over with Lynn. If he doesn’t mind, then from now on I’ll probably sleep with him,” Yomi said.
The man’s body went rigid. A second later, anger and helplessness flashed through his contracted pupils. If he had not been afraid of frightening Yomi, he would have grabbed him and held him so tightly he could not go anywhere.
…Why sleep with someone else? Did Yomi dislike him?
“I’m going to find Lynn first.” Yomi tried to go around him.
Lynn Lynn Lynn! Damn Lynn! Anxius was so angry he nearly lost his mind. He was drowned in a flood of bitterness, and once again blocked Yomi’s path firmly. “No.”
“Huh?” Yomi blinked in surprise. Only then did he realize that Anxius was actively stopping him from leaving. “Anxius, you… you’re also scared to sleep alone?”
“…What?”
Yomi quickly explained, “I thought now that your body is better, you don’t need me taking care of you anymore, so I was planning to squeeze in with Lynn… At night it’s really scary here. To be honest, I don’t dare sleep alone in a room either.”
Anxius: “…”
Yomi turned to glance at the luggage he had packed and also felt he had acted rather rashly. Still, let it stay for now. He could deal with it after resting.
But following Yomi’s gaze over there, Anxius thought Yomi was still set on leaving, and his face went even paler. He strode over and rapidly hung all those clothes back into the wardrobe. Even the quilt was packed back into the chest… In any case, Yomi had always slept in his bed.
The moment Yomi saw that, he tried to go help, but no matter what he did, he could not out-compete Anxius. He could also sense the change in Anxius’s mood, and lowered his head, picking at his fingers, looking extremely awkward.
Once Anxius had put everything away, he came back to stand before him. “Stay with me. From now on, it’ll be like this.”
His tone was especially domineering. Yomi had never intended to refuse anyway, but hearing it said like that made the little “Mm” that came out of him turn weak and soft, almost like a tiny hum.
Anxius thought he had scared him and suddenly felt at a loss.
He had no idea Yomi was simply shy.
The same Yomi who had wanted to go find another roommate just a moment ago now felt too embarrassed to even raise his head. If only he had discussed it with Anxius beforehand. Now the luggage he had dragged out had even been put back by the other man himself—how mortifying.
Outside, it was pitch black. The night wind howled against the windows, and the air was cold.
Anxius touched Yomi’s hand. It was icy. Feeling deeply apologetic for frightening him, he pressed Yomi down into a chair and turned to the bathroom. After a little while, Yomi saw him come back carrying his special foot-soaking bucket.
?!
Anxius crouched in front of him and started to take off his shoes. Snapping back to himself, Yomi quickly kicked off his shoes and socks on his own and shoved both feet into the hot water.
The temperature was perfect.
Yomi stared down at his feet. Right now, he did not dare look at Anxius’s expression at all.
Even though he had only thought about changing roommates, for some reason, when Anxius bent down to remove his shoes, Yomi suddenly had the absurd feeling that this looked exactly like the sort of scene where a wife wants to cheat, gets caught by her husband, and the husband, heartbroken, is still trying desperately to keep her. Ah, what nonsense… Yomi shook his head uneasily.
“Anxius…” After several seconds of silence, Yomi finally looked up at him. “I only thought you would rather live alone.”
Back at the manor, although they had been in the same bedroom, Yomi had slept inside his own little castle. Strictly speaking, they had not truly been sharing a room then.
So he had naturally assumed that now that the crown prince no longer needed care, he would want his own personal space.
Anxius lowered his gaze and looked at him for a long time. Watching Yomi’s two feet step restlessly through the hot water, the tension in him gradually eased. Then he said, “I like living with Mimi.”
Words that had been impossible to say before seemed to come out all at once now.
Yomi looked up very quickly, surprised—and very happy. Their eyes met.
“So do I.” Yomi pressed his lips together and smiled at him. Anxius’s gaze flickered and turned aside. The fierce, imposing aura on his face vanished completely, and his lips trembled faintly.
He turned away in a rush, pulled up a movie on the wall projection with his communicator, and used the opportunity to switch off the lights, hiding his face in the darkness.
Yomi soaked his feet while watching the movie. It was a suspense film, and he became completely absorbed in it. By the time his feet were held and dried, he only then belatedly realized what was happening. He hurriedly thanked Anxius and tried to get up to dump the water, but Anxius had already taken care of it first.
…Ah, his roommate was really too good, too thoughtful.
Yomi burrowed into the blanket and gazed with watery, moved eyes at the Anxius who kept bustling around. “It’s fine, you can clean up tomorrow. Come sleep already, Anxius.”
Those words made Anxius go stiff for several seconds. Not long after, he went into the bathroom and stayed there for quite a while before coming out.
By then, Yomi was already asleep. Anxius gently pulled him into his arms, rubbed against his cheek for a while, and then focused on warming him up.
Anxius could not sleep. During the first half of the night, he rubbed and massaged Yomi’s face. During the second half, he lay there counting Yomi’s fluffy eyelashes… Only by doing that could he force his eyes away from those beautifully shaped lips.
When Yomi got up the next morning, it was as though he had completely forgotten yesterday’s roommate drama. Happily, he washed up and then went outside to see how his vegetable patch was doing.
He had absolutely no idea that the whole incident had actually left a lingering psychological scar on Anxius. By the time he came back from the garden, he discovered Anxius inside the bedroom with tools in hand, working away… He was renovating it all over again!
Yomi only marveled for a second, then very quickly folded himself a little newspaper hat and went off to help.
It made perfect sense that the crown prince might find the old bedroom too shabby.
Anxius did not let him help. He first carried out a thorough deep cleaning of the room, then repaired some of the furniture, and even hired several craftsmen from nearby—one to help remodel the bedroom, and the others to redo the sitting room and fix the other rooms in need of repair…
The fact that Anxius suddenly launched such a large-scale renovation surprised everyone, but also made them curious.
Several days later, the inside of the villa looked completely different. All the unusable furniture had been thrown out and replaced with a brand-new set of solid wood furniture.
What everyone was most curious about, however, was how the bedroom the crown prince had worked so hard on had turned out. They were all desperate to see the luxurious room of a prince. After getting permission, they went over together to look. But the moment they reached the doorway, all of them stopped in their tracks.
In the silence, the stunned boys slowly turned their heads to look at Yomi.
Yomi also looked at the pink room in front of him and asked, “What’s wrong?”
The formerly simple, worn bedroom had been transformed into such an exquisite room that it almost seemed to bubble with pink foam. Yomi himself was not all that shocked, because the little castle Anxius had given him before had also been pink. He had simply assumed Anxius liked that color.
Pink looked warm and cozy—what was wrong with that? Besides, only the bed, sofa blanket, and carpet were pink anyway.
Yomi strongly supported Anxius renovating the bedroom. It meant Anxius had a heart that loved life. With that kind of drive, they would definitely succeed!
After the bedroom makeover, the weather turned even colder, and Yomi became lazier and lazier. Sometimes he did not even want to get out of bed during the day. He remembered that when he was little, his parents had once told him a joke: there was a man so lazy that before the person who took care of him went away on a long trip, they hung a flatbread around his neck so he would not starve. But when they came back, he had still starved to death—because after eating the part of the bread directly by his mouth, he had been too lazy to turn it and keep eating.
Now Yomi found himself wishing someone would hang a flatbread around his neck. He definitely would not be too lazy to turn it—he just did not want to leave the bed.
Of course, that was only imagination. During the day he still got up normally to eat and then sat around the stove with everyone chatting and playing games.
At night, though, things were worse than before. Once he woke up needing to pee, he often did not even want to get up. He would lie there stubbornly until he was almost bursting, and only then scramble out of bed in a panic.
The weather was dry, and if he felt thirsty before bed, he would drink a lot of water, which sometimes made him wake in the night needing the toilet.
Just like now.
Yomi slowly crawled up from bed and fumbled around for his clothes, his eyes barely open. His hands groped aimlessly in the dark.
Anxius had woken long ago the moment Yomi started wriggling. Knowing Yomi did not want to leave the warmth of the blankets, he got up without a word and began putting on clothes.
Hearing the sound of him getting out of bed, Yomi rubbed his eyes and hurriedly tried to crawl out too. “Anxius, you’re going to the toilet too? Wait for me…”
Anxius did not wait for him. Instead, he simply picked Yomi up together with the thick blanket wrapped around him.
Bundled up inside the blanket, Yomi was so startled his eyes flew wide open. “What’s going on?!”
Anxius took long strides and had already carried him to the bathroom door. Bending down, he pulled Yomi’s feet out from the blanket, slipped house slippers onto them, and when he peeled the blanket back open, he smoothly draped Yomi’s padded coat over him too. “Go quickly. I’ll wait here.”
It was so cold at night that Yomi had no time to be shocked. He dashed inside to relieve himself, and when he came back out, he was promptly rewrapped in the blanket and carried steadily back to bed.
It had all happened in one seamless motion!
“So it can even be done like this…” Yomi said, astonished.
“From now on, it’ll always be like this,” Anxius said.
“…”
