Chapter 64
With Gousheng as his son, Yomi more and more carried himself like the head of the household. Every day he rode his little donkey around the farm on patrol with great dignity, and once patrol was over, he would throw himself into his boyfriend’s arms to bask in the sun.
Anxius took his boyfriend-baby’s even intake of sunlight very seriously. Once one side had been warmed enough, he would turn him over and sun his back and butt too. When his whole body had grown nice and warm, he would even take off his boyfriend-baby’s shoes and socks so he could sun his little feet…
Cold rose from the feet. After sunning his feet, Yomi felt as though even walking became stronger and more energetic.
There was a lot of rain at the end of spring, and recently Yomi had noticed something.
Many people hunting out in the wild would run into sudden storms. When the roads became impossible, they would be forced to spend the night in nearby caves.
But most of the time, the rain came suddenly, so naturally hunters did not prepare overnight supplies. At most, some dry grass would already have been spread inside the caves. Spending the night in that kind of environment was miserable. The next day, people usually came down sick. After all, it was too cold. Sometimes there were mosquito bites, and if your luck was bad, you might even run into snakes.
However, every household only had so many quilts, and no one was willing to leave such things in a cave that anyone could use. Even if they did, there was no guarantee that when their own turn came to stay there, someone else would not already have taken the bedding away.
What if they ever ran into that kind of situation themselves in the future?
Every day, as Yomi rode around on the donkey, he thought about this. Before long, inspiration struck, and after spending some time designing, he came up with a magical kind of cloak:
Normally it could be worn as a cloak, but once inflated, it could also become a sleeping bag.
Before putting it on sale, Yomi sent the first batch of goods to Lord Black Feather of Skull State. The next day, Black Feather sent a return gift—armor shaped almost exactly like a turtle.
After putting it on, Yomi admired himself in the mirror over and over again.
It was simply too practical. The turtle shell on the back could serve as a backpack, and at crucial moments it could also be used as a weapon—you could smash into people with your back. The armor’s protective qualities were excellent too. Yomi was beyond satisfied. He turned around and asked Anxius, “Well? What do you think?”
Anxius’s dark eyes stared at him for quite a while. In the end, he could no longer bear it and walked over, scooping up the little turtle person and rubbing and kissing him all over.
As he was pinned down and kissed by his monster boyfriend, Yomi felt as though he really had become some kind of doll. He could not run away, and even dressed in turtle armor he could only helplessly let himself be kneaded and mauled… no, not mauled, loved on. Yomi tried hard to sit upright and huffed, “Turn back into human form.”
Like a student being scolded by his teacher, the huge monster immediately reverted into the form of a one-meter-ninety man, lowered his head, and continued kissing him.
Yomi sat on his lap, his ears growing itchy from the kisses. Before long, he tilted over and once again became a kneaded little doll. Yes—even if Anxius turned back into human form, he still had absolutely no power to resist…
But that was what being in love was like~ Yomi, with one shoulder half exposed, rubbed against his boyfriend’s neck, happily tilting his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the blue sky and white clouds outside, and his heart felt warm. “Darling, a little gentler.” Or else the flesh right off his shoulder would be bitten away!
While clinging sweetly to his boyfriend, Yomi accepted Black Feather’s gift with complete satisfaction.
Though the thing looked rather ugly-cute, in reality it was unbelievably useful. No knife could pierce it, and it doubled as a backpack too. That very same day, Yomi decided that from now on, he would wear this armor whenever he went hunting.
But fate was unpredictable. Before the turtle armor ever got a chance to go hunting, a local flu broke out in Ghost State.
Almost everyone on the farm caught colds. The farmers and hunters outside had too. Medicine could no longer be bought at the market, and even the town’s supply of medicine was shrinking.
Yexi, who was responsible for obtaining medicine, decided to go into a more remote mountain forest to gather herbs.
“I’ve been there before,” Yexi said, looking at the map. “There are many kinds of medicinal herbs growing there, including ones that can cure this kind of flu. Rather than going to town every day and waiting to buy that tiny bit of medicine, it would be better to pick a large supply from the mountains and keep it in reserve. Lately I’ve already seen people heading there.”
Yomi strongly agreed, and that very day he put on his turtle armor and insisted on coming too.
Possibly because he had often eaten the nutritional supplements during Anxius and Karl’s recovery periods, and because of all the sun exposure and exercise, the usually delicate-bodied Yomi somehow had astonishingly strong immunity. He was completely fine.
At present, among the people at home, only Yexi and his wife, Anxius, and Yomi himself were still in good enough condition.
Gousheng was left behind to guard the house. The four of them drove out, and after walking for a bit upon arrival, they could already see a few figures on the mountain gathering herbs as well.
Yexi had shown Yomi and Anxius beforehand what the herbs they needed looked like through the optical brain. Once they had memorized them clearly, the two sides split up to search separately.
Yomi and Anxius headed toward another thick patch of forest. Besides the flu herbs, there were also some basic hemostatic medicinal herbs there. Considering that they might be useful for the surgery later on, Anxius gathered quite a lot of those too.
Yomi was thinking of the sick people back at home and busily dug and picked along the way. Before long, he had stuffed the turtle shell on his back completely full.
The more herbs he gathered, the more reassured he felt.
In the past it had always been everyone else taking care of him. Now that he was so healthy, he wanted to take good care of everyone too… He even pulled up many plants by the roots, thinking he might try growing them later on at the farm. If they could survive there, then he could encourage everyone to grow some at home, and no one would need to fear this kind of flu again.
Yomi was so focused on herbs that he failed to notice he had walked right up to a mountain whale. Just as he was about to continue forward, the ground suddenly gave a violent shake.
Only when Yomi lifted his head in time did he realize that what stood before him was a giant mountain whale. At first he thought the shaking came from the mountain whale’s footsteps. But then Anxius suddenly grabbed him, jumped with him onto the whale’s back, and started climbing upward…
The moment they stood firm atop the mountain whale’s back, Yomi was horrified by the scene below and his face went deathly pale.
Every patch of earth in sight had cracked open. Huge rocks were rolling down the mountainside. Parts of the ground were sinking away. It seemed as though the whole world were shaking.
The moment Yomi turned around, he was just about to clutch tightly at Anxius when, in that same instant, a giant tree nearby—its trunk broken somehow—came crashing straight toward Anxius, who had just been about to say something to him.
Under that overwhelming terror, there was no time for Yomi to react. He only instinctively and numbly reached for Anxius’s hand, but it was too fast. That hand let go of him first.
Amid the thunderous crashing noise, Yomi vaguely heard a muffled “Wait for me.” The next time he blinked, he was alone atop the mountain whale’s back.
Yomi hurriedly dropped down flat and crawled to the edge of the whale’s back to look below. The nearest ground had already split open into a bottomless crack. The tree and Anxius were both gone.
“Anxius… Anxius!” Terrified, Yomi’s tears streamed down uncontrollably. Everything in front of him told him that Anxius had no chance of survival, but he refused to believe it. In order to find his boyfriend, he even started stretching his foot out, trying to climb down.
There were many animals and Junk Star people sheltering on the backs of the surrounding mountain whales. These whales would not deliberately shake the creatures off their backs. Some even actively tossed fleeing, pitiful little animals up onto their backs to rescue them.
The whale Yomi was riding happened to be one such kind-hearted old mountain whale. Seeing that the only little person it had rescued wanted to climb down, it grew anxious and stretched out its neck, repeatedly nudging the soft, limp little human back upward.
Yomi wanted to climb down and find Anxius, but the mountain whale refused to let him. The moment he stretched out even a little foot, he got nudged back up. He had absolutely no way to resist. Yomi, who had been trying so hard not to cry, could finally hold it in no longer. He burst into loud sobs.
“Waaahhh… Anxius! Where are you? It won’t let me go down… waaahhh… don’t die… where are you…”
The moment he thought of Anxius dying, pain spread through the tip of his heart. Yomi cried so hard he could barely catch his breath. He had not even gotten the chance to tell Anxius that he was actually human… Right, he was human. He was almost forgetting it himself.
He could not panic, could not panic… He first had to think of some way to find Anxius!
Yomi looked down at the crack again, wiping his tears as he turned in circles from anxiety. At last he came up with the idea of tying himself to the mountain whale with vines before jumping down to look for his boyfriend—when from the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw a huge black shape appear inside the crack below!
That familiar shape was climbing up from the abyss…
“Anxius? Anxius! Is that you?” Yomi shouted at once.
The monster was covered in blood. He seemed half dazed, climbing upward by pure obsession alone. But the moment he heard the familiar voice, he answered with a rough, hoarse sound.
Yomi’s cheeks flushed bright red with joy, but his tears flowed even harder. He wanted to climb down and help him, only for the mountain whale to apparently become frightened by the monster emerging from the crack. After freezing for a few seconds, it suddenly turned around and ran off with Yomi on its back.
“Stop! My boyfriend is over there!” Seeing himself getting farther and farther away from Anxius, Yomi cried so hard he could barely breathe. “Anxius! Anxius…”
How could this happen?
The mountain whale seemed almost to be doing this on purpose, refusing to stop no matter what.
Yomi felt he was about to faint from crying, but there was no way down. All he could do was stretch out both arms as hard as he could to signal Anxius that he was here. Yet in Anxius’s eyes, the little figure on the whale’s back desperately reaching out its hands only looked pitiful and begging to be held.
Climbing with all his strength back onto solid ground, Anxius saw that scene and flew into a rage. Ignoring the injuries to his wings, he ran like a madman after the mountain whale.
Only a few seconds later, the monster, who had almost vanished from sight, reappeared in Yomi’s blurred vision.
The next second, Yomi—who still had both hands stretched out—was pulled into an impossibly tight embrace.
Thank heavens!
Yomi had been scared out of his mind. The reality of being held now made him cry even harder. Curled up in his arms like a little turtle, he sobbed, “Thank heavens… I was terrified. I thought you were dead… I wanted to go look for you, but the mountain whale wouldn’t let me go down. Wuwuwu…”
Although Anxius deeply resented the mountain whale for almost carrying his boyfriend-baby away, he had to admit that, in all fairness, he really was grateful that the whale had stopped Yomi from going down. If Yomi had truly reached the ground, anything dangerous might have happened to him.
“I won’t die. I promised you.” The moment he held Yomi, Anxius forgot all his pain. He kissed his boyfriend-baby, and in order to comfort him, even pulled a tiny longevity lock from his clothes. “Look, I even picked up an antique down there.” When the tree trunk had knocked him down, he had reverted to his original form mid-fall. While climbing out of the crack, he unexpectedly found the human longevity lock and immediately picked it up. To Anxius, anything that belonged to humans belonged to Yomi.
Hearing this, Yomi’s wet, shining eyes dropped toward Anxius’s hand.
It was an old-fashioned golden longevity lock, yet exceptionally tiny. Even among alien babies, no one would ever use one so small. Besides, aliens had no custom of using longevity locks for blessings in the first place. To them, life was already long enough.
Yomi stared blankly at that tiny longevity lock, until Anxius voiced exactly what was in his heart:
“Neither on Snar nor on Junk Star do people use longevity locks. But extinct humans did… Which means that on Junk Star, countless hundreds of millions of years ago, humans once lived here too.”
Yomi froze.
Humans. He was human.
If Anxius knew he was human, what would he think of him?
Completely lost in thought, Yomi had no idea that while the mountain whale had been repeatedly nudging him around, the horns on his head had long since gone crooked.
The monster gently hung the longevity lock around his neck, then glanced at those crooked horns and could not help straightening them for him.
Only once his horns were set right did Yomi remember they had been shoved by the mountain whale’s mouth so many times. He quickly raised a hand to touch them. Anxius had straightened them slightly too far forward, but Yomi liked them farther back, so he pressed them back a little… and only after that did he slowly turn to stare at Anxius, then freeze.
His horns had gone crooked, and Anxius did not look surprised at all?!
“Don’t be afraid.” The monster kissed his cheek gently. The distant shaking had already stopped, and once the mountain whale reached safe high ground, Anxius jumped down to the earth with the still-dazed Yomi in his arms. “Baby, I’ve always known. I’ve always known you were human.”
Yomi’s tears kept falling. He had no control over them at all. On the very day his identity was discovered, he found that what he felt was not fear, but sorrow.
Even when Anxius had nearly died, he had still remembered to pick up a human longevity lock from the abyss for him. Anxius had long since discovered he was human, yet all this time had pretended to be fooled by him…
And yet he himself still had not been able to let down his guard.
Because he was human—the only human in this world.
“Wuwuwuwu…” He was going to cry himself into a drenched little sea turtle in Anxius’s arms.
Anxius was covered in blood. His wings could no longer fly. He thought the sight of himself, all bloodied up, must have frightened his boyfriend-baby, so with the last of his strength, he reverted to his original form and held him tightly. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Wu… I’m not afraid.” Yomi stubbornly straightened his neck. Finally, gritting his teeth, he shakily took the horns off his head and slammed straight into Anxius’s embrace. “I’m not afraid.”
Anxius shuddered all over, his whole body trembling violently. He wanted nothing more than to knead Yomi into his own heart. Even if he had to nourish him with blood and flesh, he would do so willingly. “Don’t be afraid. Baby, don’t be afraid. As long as you don’t want it, no one will ever know you’re human… You can be anything you want.” The falling tears burned his heart with pain. He gently pressed his forehead against Yomi’s pale forehead, kissed the crown of his hair, then carefully set the pair of horns back onto his head. Pressing close to his neck, Anxius whispered, “You have no idea how much, before I had the human-form surgery, I wanted to hold you like this… And now at last, I can.”
