All My Colleagues Are Animals 21

Chapter 21

“Ye Qingyu, are you cold?”

Gu Yue looked at her colleague to her left, puzzled.

The sun was warm outside the window, and the temperature inside was comfortable, yet this young human had pulled her jacket hood on and zipped it up to the very top, her entire upper body obscured save for half her face.

Ye Qingyu nodded, mumbling indistinctly, “A little.”

“I have a blanket here!” Jin Can said enthusiastically.

“It’s fine, I’m okay like this.”

Ye Qingyu lowered her eyes, guiltily fiddling with the zipper at her neck.

After a moment, her fingertips unconsciously slipped past her collar and inside, touching the gem pendant that had been warmed by her body heat. The engraved character for “Rong” gently brushed against the pad of her finger.

She managed to endure until 9:30, when her beautiful boss finally arrived at work.

“Ye Qingyu.”

The woman looked over and crooked a finger. Ye Qingyu understood the signal and stood up, her ears turning hot and red against her will.

“Why does she look so sneaky?” a colleague wondered.

“Back then, when I secretly flew to her place to beg for pets, I was just as sneaky…” another colleague recalled, stirred by the memory.

“Good thing I was my master’s properly and openly raised puppy. I didn’t have to be so sneaky,” a third colleague sighed sweetly.

Ye Qingyu tried her best to block out the shameful discussions behind her as she followed Pei Rong into the office.

With a click, the sound of the door being locked from the inside seemed to draw out the illicit undertones even further.

Pei Rong turned around, her gaze sweeping over the young woman’s high-drawn collar. She blinked her peach blossom eyes.

“Do you want me to help you take it off?”

The little red panda’s purely well-intentioned suggestion, upon entering the human’s complex brain, inevitably took on a darker shade.

Ye Qingyu’s eyelashes trembled. She suddenly didn’t know how she had fallen to this point, step by step.

She was clearly just a diligent, slacking-off, model employee. But now, she felt like she had been hand-picked for service by a rich woman at a nightclub.

No, that’s not right. After receiving a gift, showing the gift-giver the result of its use as feedback is only proper…

While trying hard to convince herself, Ye Qingyu’s fingertips touched the zipper. Her voice was a little unsteady. “Mm… I can do it myself.”

Zzzzip—

The sound of the zipper slowly opening vibrated against her eardrums in the quiet office. The sight that had been hidden all morning was finally revealed.

Pei Rong’s peach blossom eyes widened slightly.

On the young woman’s slender and graceful neck was a reddish-brown leather collar. An obsidian-like, high-quality chain was entwined around her fair skin. The bamboo-leaf-shaped gem pendant rested on her delicate collarbone, the engraved character for “Rong” particularly eye-catching.

This ascetic yet ostentatious collar, blended with the human’s gentle temperament and paired with that fresh, beautiful face like a spring leaf, had Pei the Red Panda captivated, unable to look away.

The tips of her sharp canines inexplicably began to feel a little itchy. Pei Rong couldn’t help but give them a light lick.

The red panda’s instinct to mark its territory seemed to be quietly brewing, gradually becoming a kind of impulse.

Mmm, it feels like I want to take a fierce bite of the human.

No, that’s not right. It feels like I want to be petted and have my ears rubbed by the human.

…And it also feels like this scene is familiar, so familiar that it’s bewildering and sad.

Pei Rong blinked her peach blossom eyes, which were gradually filling with a glistening moisture. Her chest rose and fell slightly, feeling a little lost in this strange sensation.

Although she, Pei the Red Panda, had never been able to attend school, she had diligently self-studied the books from the human education system.

It seemed that no subject, no chapter, had ever taught:

If you are a red panda, how should you understand and deal with this feeling.

And so, they could only be like dandelions floating everywhere in the spring, scratching at her heart, fluffy and without any rhyme or reason.

“Boss Pei.” Under the woman’s clear, deep, and direct gaze, Ye Qingyu’s heartbeat gradually became chaotic.

She moved her fingertips, at a loss. “This should be okay now, right? I’m going to take it off…”

“Don’t take it off,” the beautiful boss said immediately.

Ye Qingyu paused slightly, asking without understanding, “Why?”

Pei the Red Panda didn’t speak right away.

She took a few steps closer, closing the already short distance between them. She blinked her peach blossom eyes, looking at the young woman’s face, then suddenly raised a hand and pinched the gem pendant.

The collar was thus pulled, forcing Ye Qingyu to follow, bending over and lowering her head, like a puppy being led on a leash by its master—

Realizing this, Ye Qingyu’s pupils constricted.

Her heart pounded wildly. “Boss… Boss Pei?”

Boss Pei’s stunning face was now just inches away, the clear, sweet scent of bamboo leaves from her body becoming richer.

Her red lips parted slightly, the spring in her peach blossom eyes even more intense than the one outside the window.

“I like seeing you wear it.”

—

Lunch break.

Ye Qingyu went to her room on the third floor as usual and closed the door.

She took off her outerwear and glanced at herself in the dressing table mirror. Her ears couldn’t help but turn a little red again.

Her fingertips unconsciously toyed with the clasp of the collar, wanting to undo it, but her movement stopped just in time.

Forget it, I won’t take it off. Although sleeping with a collar on might be a little uncomfortable, I promised Boss Pei I would wear it all day today.

The woman had just blinked those rippling peach blossom eyes, and she had easily nodded in agreement.

Lying down and pulling up the covers, she occasionally felt a subtle, clinging sensation from the collar around her neck. It was somewhat familiar.

The spring breeze blew, and the half-open window rattled slightly.

The thin, gauze curtains occasionally rose and fell, and the shadows cast by the warm sunlight danced along with them, lulling her to sleep.

Ye Qingyu unknowingly drifted into a deep sleep.

In her dream, she was young, seemingly rolling around on a bed with a fluffy creature, laughing and playing, then hugging each other to sleep.

Her arms were full of warm softness, and she felt lighthearted and happy.

The dream shifted. She made a cute collar for her beloved fluffy creature. The pendant was a small silver bell that would jingle when it moved.

But somehow, the collar ended up on her own neck.

The fluffy creature then lay softly in her arms, reached out its paws, and tirelessly shook the little bell, making it ring crisply.

And she would laugh along softly, looking down at it with great earnestness. “You’ll always be with me, right?”

The fluffy creature opened its mouth, and its cute yet sharp canines nipped her chin lightly, leaving a round mark like a promise.

…

“Huh, why isn’t Little Ye at work yet?”

At 2:30 in the afternoon, everyone was sitting at their desks, yawning drowsily. They noticed that the usually punctual young human was not at her post.

Just then, Pei Rong walked into the work area and paused, a little worried about her human. “I’ll go check on her.”

She arrived at the door of the human’s room on the third floor and knocked lightly. “Ye Qingyu.”

No response.

She waited a few seconds, then knocked again with a bit more force, calling her name once more.

The room still seemed to be completely quiet.

Pei the Red Panda’s heart began to rise.

She tentatively gripped the handle and pushed down—

The door was unlocked.

She pushed the door open and walked in, calling softly, “Ye Qingyu?”

On the large bed in the center of the room, the young woman was lying flat on her back under the covers, her sleeping posture very proper.

Her eyes were tightly closed, her thick lashes like little fans, her breathing steady and even.

Pei Rong moved closer to confirm she was okay, only then relaxing a little. Her peach blossom eyes, a beat later, filled with a bit of a mood.

This sleepy human, making her, a little panda, worry.

Forget it… I’ll just let Ye Qingyu sleep a little longer.

Pei Rong straightened up, about to leave, when her gaze inadvertently moved down from the human’s face and saw that the beautiful collar was still around the human’s neck.

She suddenly found it hard to walk away.

In the office this morning, the human’s skin had suddenly turned redder than a shrimp’s. Worried she would get cooked, she had easily let Ye Qingyu go.

Now, with the time and place being so perfect, she licked her slightly itchy teeth, transformed into a red panda, and rolled onto the bed beside the human.

Observing up close, she watched how the collar’s chain was entwined around the pale white skin, how the gem pendant with her name on it rose and fell on the delicate collarbone with the human’s every breath.

She had only intended to look.

But an inexplicable sense of familiarity welled up, her teeth growing itchier. The small animal’s instinct to mark its territory seemed to be acting up again.

How could it be familiar?

Today was clearly the first time she had ever seen someone wear a collar.

Pei the Red Panda raised a paw and rubbed her soft ears, rubbing them into a messy shape, trying hard to resist this feeling, but to no avail.

In the end, she couldn’t help but open her mouth, the tips of her sharp canines exposed. Her brown eyes watched her human, wanting to trace this familiarity back to its source.

She stretched out a furry paw and gently pulled at the collar.

The red panda hesitated for a moment, then finally pressed her head against the human’s chin and took a light bite of the pendant engraved with the character “Rong.”

It was hard, not good for biting, and not familiar.

She shifted a little and tentatively bit the leather part of the collar next to it.

The collar was pressed against the human’s skin, so completing this action without biting Ye Qingyu was a bit difficult.

The fur on Pei the Red Panda’s head rubbed back and forth against the human’s neck. After failing to get into position for a long time, she finally took a decisive bite—

—and her teeth got stuck in the groove of the collar’s clasp.

Pei the Red Panda’s large, furry ears twitched.

But it wasn’t out of anxiety, but a jolt to her heart.

In that instant, she was filled with a sense of bewilderment in the sudden, strong rush of déjà vu.

It was as if she, a little red panda, had once caused mischief on someone’s collar just like this, and had accidentally gotten her teeth stuck.

In the end… in the end, it seemed someone had carefully rescued her, and had rubbed her head with great tenderness.

Pei the Red Panda was stunned for a long while before she came back to her senses. She used her paws to pull at Ye Qingyu’s collar, struggling with all her might to free her teeth.

Exhausted, she stuck out her pink tongue, panting, and collapsed on the side into a little red panda pancake that had lost its dreams.

Just then, a thought surfaced in her mind without any warning—

When I had the collar customized for Ye Qingyu, I think I forgot to add a small bell, the kind that would jingle when it shakes.