Moya lit a fire in the fire pit at the cave entrance.
Gao Yue poked her head out and looked around. Recalling how careless this Mr. Python seemed to be, she felt a bit uneasy about letting him handle things alone and wanted to head out of the cave to find him.
So she climbed down from the stone bed barefoot, walked briskly to her suitcase, and dug out her plastic slippers and towel from inside.
She didn't put the slippers on right away.
She had just been walking barefoot around the cave, so the soles of her feet were dirty—putting them on directly would get the slippers dirty.
So she carried the slippers and walked barefoot to the wooden bucket, meaning to scoop up some water to clean her feet. But after looking around, she couldn't find any tool to scoop water with.
She felt the outside of that stone cup had some dust on it, and scooping water directly would dirty the water in the bucket, so with no other choice, she carefully used the corner of her towel to soak up a bit of water.
Only after wetting one corner did she use the towel to wipe the soles of her feet.
She hadn't thought of using the towel to dry her hair earlier, because the towel had also been knocked to the ground by that gang of bandits—she felt wiping her hair with it would just make her hair dirty, but wiping her feet was fine.
Standing like a golden rooster on one leg, she wiped her right foot clean and put on the right slipper, then wiped her left foot clean and stepped into the left slipper.
Looking at the now-dirtied towel, she really wanted to wash it, but it seemed the water in this wooden bucket still needed to be boiled for her to drink, so she had no choice but to give up on the idea.
She looked around but couldn't find anywhere to hang the towel. Aside from the stone bed, this cave showed no trace of anyone living in it at all—it was practically like a tourist attraction.
Cold, dim, and empty.
Still, so far she hadn't spotted a single bug, which was quite nice.
Unable to find anywhere to hang it, she had no choice but to fold the towel up and set it temporarily on top of her suitcase.
Everything here was so inconvenient.
Gao Yue sighed inwardly.
Still, surviving the flood was already a blessing—she shouldn't be asking for the moon on top of it.
Sitting at the cave entrance building the fire, Moya watched the female cub's series of movements, one eyebrow lifting slightly, and tossed another branch into the fire without much thought.
He had never seen a female cub so obsessed with cleanliness before.
Cubs normally ran around barefoot, and only had their feet wiped clean by their fathers after getting them dirty—he'd never seen one insist on carefully wiping her own feet after just a few steps.
But watching her, she seemed inexplicably endearing, especially the neat, careful way she folded up the cloth.
Judging by how Gao Yue had been looking around earlier, she was probably trying to find somewhere to hang her little pink cloth, but hadn't found anywhere.
Moya lowered his lashes, poking at the firewood in the pit, quietly planning to have someone build a new wooden rack so the cub would have somewhere to put that cloth.
Once Gao Yue set the towel down, she hurried outside in her slippers.
She wanted to see how Moya boiled water.
She had figured it out! The people here might look very good, and could even shapeshift, but their living habits seemed to still be stuck in the primitive stage—incredibly rough around the edges.
She wanted to go check whether the stone pot he was boiling her water in had been washed clean.
Outside the cave, Moya sat on a rock, his long, sleek legs stretched out casually, a branch in hand stirring the firewood in the pit, coaxing the flames from small to large.
The stone pot sat off to the side.
Gao Yue crouched down and looked at the stone pot first.
It seemed the pot had already been washed by the river—it was wet—but she wasn't sure how clean the wash had actually been. Not quite at ease, she rubbed a finger along it, and seeing that the water residue on her fingertip was clean, she finally let out a breath of relief.
Moya, who had been watching her the whole time: "..."
Heh. No wonder she'd rushed out so urgently—so she'd come to inspect whether he'd cleaned it properly.
Fine. A sense of foreboding was starting to settle in him—taking care of this female cub was not going to be easy. He sighed helplessly.
The fire was going well now.
Moya set the stone pot over the fire pit, went back into the cave to fetch the wooden bucket, and poured the water into the pot.
Gao Yue watched from the side, marveling.
No matter how many times she saw it, watching him carry something that heavy as if it were a toy made her heart pound with a bit of fear. If he ever hit her, one punch would surely be enough to kill her.
Suddenly she remembered something important—her dirty clothes still hadn't been washed!
If the flood-soaked dirty clothes weren't washed now, they'd go sour within a day. Given her current situation, every single piece of clothing she'd brought from Earth was precious and absolutely could not be ruined.
"Can I use whatever's left in the wooden bucket freely?" she asked.
Moya nodded.
Gao Yue hurried back into the cave and pulled out her bundle of dirty clothes—a pink dirty nightgown, with her dirty underwear wrapped inside. She grabbed the clothes, intending to toss them into the wooden bucket and then wash them, disability and all, with her one good left hand.
But before she could even toss the clothes in, Moya took them from her: "You want to wash clothes? You should have told me about something like this."
Gao Yue: "No, no, no, I'll just do it myself."
Moya frowned. "How would you wash anything with one arm broken? Besides, our tribe doesn't have a custom of letting female cubs wash their own clothes."
At that moment he once again felt Gao Yue was far too well-behaved—so well-behaved it was as if she'd been mistreated back in her old tribe.
Washing clothes with the water in the wooden bucket wouldn't get them properly clean.
He carried them off to wash by the river instead.
The pot was already set over the fire pit; it would still take a while to boil.
So he told her to stay put and went to wash the clothes.
But this time Gao Yue absolutely insisted on tagging along, so Moya had no choice but to carry her with him. To avoid being disturbed, he picked a stretch of river where hardly anyone came, with shallower water, so the cub wouldn't accidentally fall in.
"Let me wash them, don't trouble yourself!"
The moment Gao Yue got down from his arms, she hurried to grab the dirty clothes from his hands.
"Go stand over there."
Moya dodged her effortlessly—in the blink of an eye he was already five steps away from her—then bent down and shook the dirty clothes out in the river water.
As the clothes shook open, the underwear bundled inside tumbled out and nearly floated away with the current, but Moya's sharp eyes and quick hands snatched it right back.
Gao Yue's face flushed bright red in an instant.
"What is this?" Moya asked, puzzled, his jade-white fingers hooked through her underwear, lifting the cartoon-patterned scrap of fabric.
"That's—that's underwear worn beneath clothes..."
Gao Yue was stammering by now, striding over, red-faced and furious with embarrassment, trying to snatch it back. "I told you, let me wash it myself, I'm used to doing my own laundry!"
But she still couldn't wrestle it away from Moya.
As long as Moya didn't let her have it, her grabbing attempts were as feeble as a chick flapping its wings, which only made her more furious.
In the end, it was still Moya who washed her clothes clean.
Gao Yue stood off to the side, watching this ridiculously handsome, super good-looking man crouched by the river, using his artwork-perfect hands to wash her nightgown and scrub her underwear, tears welling up inside her, her whole self like an ant on a hot pan, spinning in circles from the sheer heat of it, momentarily regretting having tagged along.
Had she known it would be like this, she'd have been better off staying curled up in the cave.
If she couldn't see it, she couldn't feel embarrassed by it.
She would rather wash a hundred pieces of clothing with her own hands than endure such a mortifying punishment.
Once the clothes were washed, the two of them headed back to the cave.
The river wasn't very far from Moya's cave, and with how fast Moya moved, it only took the two of them about two minutes to get back.
The washed clothes were hung out to dry on the branches of the big tree by the cave entrance.
Gao Yue felt there'd probably be little bugs on the branches, and drying clothes like this wasn't ideal, but there was nothing to be done about it. After everything she'd just been through, she'd already shut down into a scalded, tight-lipped gourd of a person—whatever happens, happens.
Washing the clothes hadn't taken very long.
By the time they got back, the water still wasn't fully boiled.
Mainly because the stone pot was thick and large, nowhere near as heat-conductive as an iron pot, so it took quite a while to bring water to a boil. Right now the water inside was only lukewarm, somewhere around fifty or sixty degrees.
Moya figured that if it got any hotter, she wouldn't be able to drink it, and was about to put out the fire so Gao Yue could drink.
"No, no, no!" Gao Yue immediately dropped her earlier embarrassment to stop him. "Wait until the water's bubbling before putting out the fire, it's not ready yet."
Moya raised an eyebrow, his narrow eyes sweeping over to her: "If it boils more it'll be scalding hot—can you drink that?"
Was Gao Yue some strange species with a high heat tolerance?
Gao Yue: "I can wait for it to cool down before drinking it."
Moya: "..."
Gao Yue glanced at his utterly indescribable expression and gave a light cough before saying:
"Where I'm from, people's constitutions are all rather weak. That's just how we drink water."
"We call water that hasn't been boiled 'raw water,' and water that's been boiled 'boiled water.' Raw water has tiny invisible organisms in it that can give us stomachaches, but boiling it kills those organisms off, so we won't get stomachaches."
Hearing this explanation, Moya gained a new understanding of just how fragile her body was, and nodded with a slight headache. "I see. So does that mean you can't eat raw meat either?"
Gao Yue nodded vigorously, her eyes lighting up.
He could draw inferences on his own—wonderful, that meant she wouldn't have to spell out every single request herself.
Moya: "Understood." He made a mental note of the things to watch out for in raising this cub, already mulling over what food to prepare for her that evening.
He was starting to regret taking on this task.
Maybe he should just pay someone in beast crystals to take care of this cub instead?
With still a good while to go before the water cooled, Gao Yue had nothing to do, so she sat by the fire pit chatting with Moya, asking him whatever questions she could think to ask, and sharing whatever she felt comfortable sharing.
She told him her name, saying she was called Gao Yue.
As they chatted, something occurred to her, and she ran back into the cave, burying herself in her suitcase to dig around, quickly pulling out a jewelry box tucked away in a hidden compartment.
She popped open the hidden clasp and took out a unisex-style planet necklace.
This whole box of jewelry was stuff she'd been keeping for filming videos—samples sent by brands for her to advertise.
She was a beauty blogger, but besides cosmetics, hair accessories, earrings, and necklaces could all be included too—lots of categories meant lots of possible ad deals.
Of course, the necklaces were never the luxury-tier, tens-of-thousands-of-dollars kind—not even mid-range luxury brands came looking for her—they were all in the tens or low hundreds of dollars range.
Actually, brands selling necklaces worth just a few dollars or ten dollars would come looking for her to advertise too, but if it was too cheap, Gao Yue wouldn't take the deal, worried the metal might be low-quality and cause skin problems for whoever wore it.
Gao Yue held the planet necklace out to Moya: "This is a specialty from my hometown. It's a gift for you—thank you for taking me in and looking after me."
The necklace was finely made, its material impossible to place—something like silver, but not quite—gleaming brightly.
Moya's eyes softened.
This female cub had a fragile body, but a wonderful personality, completely unlike other female cubs—she'd even thought to thank him for taking care of her.
..Well, fine, he'd just keep looking after her. She was this fragile and this much trouble; someone else might not be able to take proper care of her.
Then, as if the thought of handing her off to someone else had never once crossed his mind, Moya said to her: "No need. It was I who broke your arm—taking care of you is already my responsibility."
Gao Yue held it out further: "This is a token of my gratitude. Please take it."
Moya shook his head, lifting his lashes and raising his shimmering eyes to look at her: "A female only gives gifts to a male she has feelings for. If a male accepts it, it means he's willing to become her mate."
Gao Yue froze for a moment, then quickly found a counterargument: "But I'm a cub! A cub! This doesn't count!"
Moya still showed no sign of accepting it.
Gao Yue kept trying to persuade him, arguing right up until the boiled water had cooled without budging Moya an inch. In the end, her mouth dry from talking, she could only glare uselessly and finally gave up, saying with a huff, "Fine, I'm giving it to you either way. I'll leave it by the bed—whenever you feel like wearing it, just take it yourself."
Take it or leave it—she'd done her part.
She was so thirsty. The water had finally cooled a bit, and she wanted to drink.
Gao Yue reached for the stone pot with her left hand, only to find it far heavier than she'd expected—no matter how she pulled, the pot didn't budge an inch.
She paused, eyes going wide as she secretly strained, her face flushing red, every bit of muscle buried in the soft flesh of her arm working at once, until she finally managed to lift it just a little.
Good grief, this thing had to weigh at least thirty or forty pounds.
Then her strength gave out almost immediately and it dropped back down, splashing water everywhere.
This damn thing was heavier than two bags of rice!
Gao Yue was thoroughly convinced.
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