Adopting a Little Dog - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am a witch, and I live deep within the Forest.

My dream is to own a doggo.

The first time I saw Lu Qie, badly wounded and half-dead, I let out a groundhog scream.

At long last, it was my turn to pick up a puppy by the roadside!

After I carried him home and washed him clean, I realized I had picked up the wrong dog.

That glossy silver fur all over him was actually a fur coat he was wearing.

And beneath that fluffy, messy hair was, in fact, a human face.

The ears and fluffy tail, though, were real.

They were just wolf ears and a wolf tail.

I fell silent.

My dog-scrubbing hand stopped, and I began considering how to send him back exactly as I had found him.

The dog barked.

No, wait. He gave a muffled groan.

His lashes trembled, and he slowly opened his eyes.

They were black and bright, like the finest obsidian in the Forest.

He did look quite a bit like a dog.

Forget it.

I’d raise him like one.

I continued scrubbing him.

As I scrubbed, I muttered, “How about I call you Wangcai from now on?”

Wangcai lifted his eyes and said softly, “I have a name. It’s Lu Qie.”

I said, “Okay, Wangcai.”

Wangcai fell silent.

Wangcai shut down.

He closed his eyes again.

Ah, youth. One second up, the next second asleep.

It took me an entire day to clean him up. I even straightened out all the tangles in his hair.

I wanted to wake him.

Only then did I realize he was sleeping like the dead.

It turned out he had passed out.

I fed him some more magic potion before he finally woke up.

Lu Qie ran a hand through his hair and sank into deep contemplation.

I took credit at once. “Your hair was clumped together! I spent the whole afternoon combing it straight for you!”

Calmly, he said, “I was born with curly hair.”

There is nothing scarier than the air suddenly going quiet.

I laughed awkwardly. “Well, think of it as a new hairstyle.”

Lu Qie’s injuries were tricky.

But since I had taken in a pet, I had to be responsible for him to the very end.

I used to be a destitute witch who never knew where her next meal was coming from.

Now, in order to save money to treat Lu Qie’s wounds, I couldn’t even afford the meal before that.

A handful of painkilling herbs cost one gold coin.

A handful of hemostatic herbs cost two gold coins.

Every day, I squatted by the door with a twig in hand, doing the math.

The more I calculated, the more I felt that Lu Qie had truly drawn the short straw by being picked up by a broke ghost like me.

I used the cheapest herbs.

But I brewed the potions myself, without a single impurity.

I often brewed medicine until my eyes were bloodshot.

Then, with those bloodshot eyes, I continued taking care of the half-dead Lu Qie.

Before his wounds had fully healed, they would split open again every full-moon night.

The pain left him drenched in cold sweat, and his already pale face lost even the last trace of color.

He bit his thin lips until beads of blood welled up, one by one, and fell onto the front of his clothes.

Holding a wooden bowl, I fed him painkilling potion one mouthful at a time.

As I fed him, I hummed a song, trying to distract him.

“Little dog, be good, little dog, be good. Clever and lively, ah, naughty and cute~”

He listened in silence. When I stopped to drink some water, he told me, “Wolf.”

I nodded without a care.

That was just a matter of changing one word.

“Little wolf, be good, little wolf, be good~”

Lu Qie closed his eyes and leaned against my shoulder with a peaceful expression.

I could smell the cedar scent lingering around him.

It made me think of a coniferous forest covered in snow.