“Is the little guy still throwing a temper tantrum?”
Not seeing Fang Jing wake up even as dinner time approached, Lu Hao stepped out of his room, intending to ask the flying ship’s head chef to warm up some food and save it for him.
Seeing that Lu Hao was not accompanied by the small white ball of fluff, Lin Shen asked with a hint of puzzlement.
Lu Hao shook his head, looking dejected. “I don’t know whether he is angry or sad.”
Anger and sadness were two different emotions.
Or perhaps, for Fang Jing, it was a mix of both, and he simply couldn’t be sure.
This was the first time Xie Zhinian had seen his friend looking so defeated. Along his journey, Lu Hao had experienced both successes and failures. In the eyes of most people, his path had been smooth sailing, but outsiders didn’t know that he had also once been pinned to the ground and rubbed in the dust by upper-class military academy cadets and soldiers under Marshal Lu’s command.
For military academy cadets like them, that was a humiliation, a disgraceful thing. Yet Lu Hao had never shown any negative emotions because of it; even when the Second Brother Lu was injured, he had adjusted his mindset very quickly.
Although Xie Zhinian had just contracted his own beast, he had also raised a pet beast when he was young. Even so, he still couldn’t understand how Lu Hao could be so deeply affected by a contract beast.
If it were him, he would probably pick Yuanyuan up and give it a few slaps to see if it would dare throw tantrums again.
Uncomprehending, Xie Zhinian asked, “Ah-Hao, don’t you think Yuanyuan is acting too abnormally?” Furthermore, it was far too smart.
Pei Sui and the others knew that Fang Jing had some intelligence, but they didn’t know just how high his intelligence was.
Lu Hao said in a deep voice, “He is just stuck in a corner and can’t turn around. Just like some pet beasts, they actually dislike their owners having other pet beasts besides them. Humans know how to vie for favor, so pet beasts naturally know it too. He is not acting abnormally.”
“Ah-Hao, but other people’s contract beasts aren’t like this.” Pei Sui tried to remind Lu Hao. “Like Uncle Lu, Uncle Lin, or my dad, they hadn’t gotten married yet when they contracted their beasts, but I’ve never heard of any contract beast throwing a tantrum just because its master mentioned getting married.”
“How can other people’s contract beasts compare to my Yuanyuan? Yuanyuan is very smart; he is just scared.” Lu Hao knew deeply that Fang Jing was different from other contract beasts, and it was precisely because he was different that he felt afraid.
Lin Shen said, “Ah-Hao, if Yuanyuan is too smart, it might not be a good thing. His behavior right now is wrong.”
For a contract beast to possess such a strong sense of possessiveness might not turn out well. Lu Hao couldn’t possibly truly follow his whims and make him the center of his universe for the rest of his life.
“If you can send him back and let specialized personnel take care of him. After all, since he is so small, he cannot provide any assistance by your side. On the contrary, with him around, you have to split your time and energy to take care of his food and lodging, and even manage his moods. It might be fine for a day or two, but can you handle it for long?” That sounded utterly ruthless, but it was the bloody reality.
Lu Hao looked at Xie Zhinian, fell silent for a moment, and then said, “The two words responsibility are always easy to speak and hard to practice. I know what you said is right. If I really handed him over to someone else, I would rather I had never brought him back from Fire Cloud Star in the first place. I was the one who brought him away from his hometown and his tribe, making him leave behind the family and friends he was familiar with. When the time comes that he can only rely on and trust me, if I were to throw him to someone else just because I considered his over-reliance a heavy burden, then even if I handed him over to others and his life didn’t turn out too poorly, still clothed and fed, wouldn’t that still be abandonment? To not want something is to not want it; no matter how you dress it up, it’s all the same.”
Hearing these words, Pei Sui and the other two fell silent.
Right, for other contract beasts, perhaps it didn’t matter; they could eat and sleep anywhere. But for Lu Hao’s Yuanyuan, it was different.
The other military academy students heading to Fire Cloud Star only found it strange that the white ball of fluff, which they had seen every single day for two consecutive days whenever they saw Lu Hao, was nowhere to be seen beside him tonight.
Lu Hao retrieved two bunches of grapes from the restaurant fruit section and returned to his room.
“Yuanyuan?” Lu Hao sat by the window, his palm gently stroking Fang Jing’s back, but the latter remained completely motionless, giving Lu Hao no reaction whatsoever.
Left with no choice, Lu Hao had to manually coax Fang Jing’s small head out from within his curled-up body.
As soon as Fang Jing’s head emerged, his rounded nose twitched, as if sniffing something.
Seeing this, Lu Hao let out a sigh of relief. Even if he hadn’t fully woken up, this white ball of fluff was still the same little foodie he was familiar with.
Lu Hao plucked a grape, peeled it, and brought it to Fang Jing’s lips. Fang Jing’s nose twitched again, his mouth zeroed in on the exact location, and with a single bite, he snapped up the grape from the corner of his mouth.
The dark grapes Lu Hao brought back were large, about the size of half an egg. They were extremely sweet with a rich grape flavor, making them highly popular interstellar fruits.
Fang Jing ate them one by one, his cheeks bulging out and his small mouth unable to contain all the grape juice, a few drops spilling from the corner of his lips.
“Yuanyuan, eat slowly.” Lu Hao pulled out a tissue to wipe it clean for Fang Jing, then tucked two more under his chin.
Fang Jing ate very quickly, and the way his mouth moved was overly cute. Lu Hao rested his upper body on the bay window, propping his chin on his forearms, watching Fang Jing eat with keen interest.
“Ah.” Fang Jing finished eating, unconsciously letting out an ah sound, opened his mouth, and closed his eyes while waiting to be fed.
After a short while, when nothing entered his mouth from that angle, he actually knew to shift his position slightly, smack his lips, and a soft, youthful voice spilled out: “More, want more.”
“Alright, I’ll give you some.” Lu Hao, who doted on Fang Jing anyway, hurriedly peeled a second grape and fed it to Fang Jing’s mouth. “Yuanyuan, are the grapes delicious?”
How could someone who was asleep give him any response?
Fang Jing was like a gluttonous nestling; even with his eyes closed, he hadn’t forgotten to eat. As long as he ate, Lu Hao tirelessly peeled grape after grape and fed them to his mouth.
After feeding him two bunches and finding that Fang Jing was still opening his mouth and clamoring for food, Lu Hao, terrified that Fang Jing would go hungry, went outside to fetch other food and continued feeding him.
When Fang Jing finally ate his fill, Lu Hao picked him up and wiped his four limbs clean. Lu Hao knew that once Fang Jing fell asleep, unless he was hungry, nothing short of an earthquake would wake him.
Fang Jing was sleeping soundly, but without the little fellow accompanying him, without the fluffy touch against his body, and without Fang Jing sleeping pressed against him, Lu Hao unexpectedly felt a sense of maladjustment and deep unfamiliarity.
It wasn’t until he placed Fang Jing right on his chest that Lu Hao let out a heavy sigh of relief. Holding Fang Jing’s front limbs in the crook of his thumb, he let the soft little head droop softly over his face.
Lu Hao observed Fang Jing closely, gently swaying him a few times. Seeing that he hadn’t woken up, he kissed Fang Jing on the forehead again and praised, “So cute.”
Regarding the fact that Fang Jing didn’t shed hair, Lu Hao had discovered it long ago; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to pull off kissing a mouth full of fur.
After putting the little fellow back onto his chest, Lu Hao didn’t forget to adjust Fang Jing’s sleeping posture, resting his head on his shoulder, and lightly stroked his back back and forth with his right hand while murmuring to himself, “Such a cute little fellow, why is his temper so big? He gets angry too easily, ignoring me for half a day already, yet he’s still sleeping so soundly and heartlessly without a care in the world. Such a little ungrateful wretch.”
With that, Lu Hao pulled up the blanket to cover both himself and Fang Jing. Wondering what else to think about, he adjusted the indoor temperature a long time later and finally fell asleep holding Fang Jing.
The next morning at eight o’clock.
Lu Hao woke up, but Fang Jing was still fast asleep.
After breakfast, the person sitting cross-legged on the bed did not read books as usual. Instead, he clumsily held a pair of scissors in one hand and gestured with the other, unsure of what he was trying to do.
The highly water-absorbent, pure white cotton fabric in his hand was cut into very small pieces and then sewn with a needle into a tiny bib.
Lu Hao had never done this kind of work before, so his movements were inevitably clumsy, and he poked his fingertip with the needle several times in the middle. Yet, he did not stop.
“Haohao, what are you doing?”
The first thing Fang Jing saw when he blinked awake was Lu Hao doing needlework. Filled with curiosity, he crawled out from under the blanket, scrambled over to Lu Hao, and raised his little head to look at him.
Lu Hao was startled by Fang Jing’s sudden voice, causing the needle point to pierce his fingertips once again. Connected straight to the heart, it hurt so much that he let out an instinctive hiss.
Seeing the bleeding fingertip, Fang Jing scrambled onto Lu Hao’s knees ahead of time, grabbing Lu Hao’s arm with his front paws and pulling downward with all his might. “Haohao, you’re hurt.”
“Yuanyuan, I’m fine. It was just a needle prick, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Saying this, Lu Hao relaxed his arm along with Fang Jing’s pull. Before he could say any more reassurances, the sensation suddenly transmitting from his fingertip made him swallow back the words he was about to say.
“Yuanyuan,” the strange sensation gave Lu Hao a start, “what are you doing?”
After licking Lu Hao’s finger clean, Fang Jing looked up. “Now it doesn’t hurt anymore. Haohao, what were you doing just now? It was so dangerous, you hurt yourself.”
“I wanted to make a bib for you.”
“A bib?” Clearly, these two words fell outside Fang Jing’s circle of knowledge. Whenever he encountered something unfamiliar, out of habit, he tilted his head. “What is a bib?”
“A bib is something used to prevent food, saliva, and things like that from dirtying your clothes.”
“Oh like that. Who are you making it for?” Fang Jing rummaged through the few finished bibs Lu Hao had already placed to the side, finding that they were all so small that they probably wouldn’t even suit a newborn baby.
Lu Hao put down his sewing tools, picked up one of the bibs, which he had sewn with an ugly little butterfly, and tied it onto Fang Jing. “This is made for you. Look, the size is just right. Once Yuanyuan puts it on, it looks very nice.”
Lu Hao’s skills were limited, and his materials were too. Lacking buttons, he could only sew two small pink strings and tie them securely, so the bib naturally settled into place.
Fang Jing was already tiny to begin with, and the pink strings tied into a bow stood out exceptionally clearly against his body.
Not to mention, having a bit of colorful embellishment other than white really made the little fellow look quite adorable.
Fang Jing sat obediently right on Lu Hao’s lap, waiting for him to finish adjusting it before curiously reaching out his front paw to tug at it. The bib was soft and thin, just right for this weather. “Is Haohao worried that I’ll get dirty when I eat? I can eat properly. When I finish eating, I’ll be clean, and I won’t be like before, making myself all messy and needing Haohao to help me take a bath.”
Lu Hao: “…”
These words from Fang Jing left Lu Hao instantly stunned.
Lu Hao only felt a sharp, aching sourness gripping his chest, and his heart swelled up with a very uncomfortable tightness, as if a ball of cotton had been stuffed inside and soaked with water, heavy and weighty, continuously pulling his heart downward.
Fang Jing’s sudden maturity felt just like an older child in a family with a second sibling. When the older child grows sensible, it isn’t because they’ve reached a certain age or suddenly care about hygiene; rather, they’ve realized that if they get dirty, their parents, whose energy is now focused on the younger sibling, can no longer pay attention to them all the time. In fact, under such circumstances, they might only receive questioning and blame from their parents: Why are you so unaccommodating?
This was not what Lu Hao wanted.