The Smut-Novel Heroine in the Beast World - Chapter 2

At last, we arrived at Xu Bai’s home.

I noticed that his hair had changed color.

A hint of red showed through the black.

If black cats could blush, this was probably the color their fur would turn.

He hesitated. “Do you want to eat me right now?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I looked at him eagerly. “I’m starving.”

“…” He lowered his eyes, looking a little aggrieved, and his hair turned pure black again.

“Then I’ll wash up first. Once I’m clean, you can eat me.”

He glanced at my filthy state. “Do you want to take a bath too?”

I looked down at myself. “Yes.”

The moment I finished bathing, I rushed to the kitchen to see if he was done cooking.

But as soon as I reached the doorway, I froze.

Xu Bai stood there with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, a sharp kitchen knife raised high in one hand.

A soft, translucent pink tentacle poked out from beneath his shirt and lay curled miserably on the cutting board, trembling.

“What are you doing?” I cried.

Xu Bai opened his eyes and tightened his grip on the knife.

“Making octopus balls for you.”

“?” I snatched the knife from his hand.

“Octo-bro, you’re way too loyal.”

So he really was an octopus.

I had thought he was a chameleon.

“…” Xu Bai took a deep breath. “I’m an octopus prince.”

“I didn’t want to live anyway. If you can have one good meal before I die, I don’t mind.”

“Why don’t you want to live?” I asked.

“How about this? Treat me to a bowl of rice, and I’ll listen to your heartbreaking tale. Deal?”

There was no rice in the house.

Xu Bai searched human recipes online, then made me a meal of hairy crabs with the ingredients he had.

I wolfed them down.

Even after I finished, Xu Bai never told me his heartbreaking tale.

Instead, he agreed to let me stay the night and prepared a guest room for me.

He warned me over and over, “You can’t come out in the middle of the night. My true form will scare you.”

But in my sleepy haze, I forgot.

I came out for water in the middle of the night and found a human-sized teru teru bozu hanging in the living room.

I screamed. The smart lights came on.

Dark purple, semitransparent tentacles hung limp beneath a round head whose face I couldn’t make out.

“Xu Bai?” I ventured.

The doll suddenly began to shrink.

Once it was no bigger than my thumb, it slid off the cord and scuttled away on all fours.

It slipped through the crack beneath Xu Bai’s bedroom door.

I followed and knocked.

After a long while, Xu Bai’s voice came from inside, straining to sound calm. “Come in.”

A warm yellow light glowed in the bedroom.

Xu Bai’s hair was entirely purple. His face had turned purple too.

“What’s wrong?” He coughed violently. A ring-shaped red mark circled his neck.

I stared at his purple face. “…”

Dude.

This was getting a little creepy.

After coughing for a while longer, the color gradually returned to his face.

His hair turned the same red as an embarrassed emoji.

“Sorry. Did I scare you?”

“I just felt like swinging in the middle of the night.”

“You probably don’t know this yet, but that’s how we octopuses use a swing.”

I stared. “That’s also a great way to get yourself killed.”

“You look more like a jellyfish, though. Are you sure you aren’t a jellyfish prince?”

“…My octopus father found me and took me in. I don’t know what species I am either.”

I sat cross-legged across from him and began fishing for information.

“Then why don’t you live in the deep sea?”

“After my octopus father died, my clan called me a monster and drove me away.”

The subject seemed to make Xu Bai anxious.

Without realizing it, he summoned one of his little translucent pink tentacles and kneaded it between his hands.

“But the beastfolk on land call me a monster too. They tell me to crawl back into the sea.”

“The world is enormous, yet there’s nowhere I belong.”

Watching him made my own hands itch. While he wasn’t paying attention, I snuck one little tentacle away and kneaded it too.

It was cool and soft to the touch, with the tiniest hint of stickiness.

When I held it in my palm, it rubbed against me of its own accord.

It felt amazing.

“Then you could keep a pet.”

“Like, say, a desperate stray human with nowhere else to go…”

I hinted as hard as I could.

Xu Bai did not get it.

“I’ve tried, but humans are frightened of my true form.”

“No one could ever like a tentacle monster.” He sounded dejected.

I raised my hand. “Me. I do.”

“I’m the heroine of a smut novel. No one knows how to play with tentacle monsters better than I do.”

Xu Bai tilted his head. “What is a smut-novel heroine?”

I leaned over and whispered a few sentences into his ear.

When I drew back, his ears and cheeks were scarlet.

His hair had turned hot pink.

Head lowered, he asked coyly, “Then… as long as I make you feel good, you won’t be afraid of my tentacles?”

“Mm-hmm!”