All My Colleagues Are Animals 18

Chapter 18

When Ye Qingyu woke up, the purplish-red sunset was burning intensely outside the French windows.

She pushed herself up from the sofa, her head feeling like it was about to split open.

Beautiful boss… furry ears… red panda…

Hazy images, fragmented and disjointed, couldn’t be pieced together or grasped.

“Hiss—” Ye Qingyu rubbed her throbbing head and inadvertently looked down, seeing that she was hugging a red panda plush toy.

She stared blankly for a few seconds, her consciousness slowly returning, before realizing this was the housewarming gift from Boss Pei.

Where is Boss Pei?!

At the time, she and Boss Pei were having a small drink together, and then… and then…

Ye Qingyu, enduring the headache, immediately stood up from the sofa. Forgetting to even put on her slippers, she hugged the red panda doll and searched everywhere.

“Boss Pei?”

Her gaze moved down and stopped on the pair of neat, fluffy slippers by the entryway. Her heart suddenly felt empty.

…Boss Pei already went home.

The sunset intensified, burning all the way from the horizon to the hem of Ye Qingyu’s clothes. Her solitary shadow on the ground was stretched thin and long.

Standing in the small home she had lived in for years, a place so familiar and comfortable, she felt a sense of loneliness for the first time.

It was like a powerful aftereffect.

After a long moment, Ye Qingyu, who had been frozen like a statue, finally let out a soft sigh. She walked with heavy steps toward the kitchen, planning to get a carton of milk from the fridge to sober up.

Passing by the messy dining room, her steps faltered.

She looked at the overturned wine bottle, the chairs askew, the chaotic tabletop…

It seemed she hadn’t just calmly passed out drunk.

Ye Qingyu’s brow twitched. She walked quickly to the bathroom and examined herself in the mirror.

She immediately saw a bite mark on the side of her neck. It had now coagulated into a purplish-red, quite conspicuous on her fair skin.

The two small, round indentations in the bite mark reminded her of Pei Rong’s canines, which were sharper than a normal person’s.

Her heart instantly trembled.

How did I get bitten?

I didn’t… do anything to Boss Pei, did I?!

Uneasy, Ye Qingyu’s hand unconsciously went to the furry ear of the red panda doll in her arms. As she casually rubbed and kneaded it, her thoughts suddenly stalled.

So familiar.

As if she had just recently touched some furry ear just as wantonly.

“You… you’re playing with me, a little red panda…” The woman’s soft voice echoed faintly in her mind, filled with a familiar sulkiness.

“…” Ye Qingyu’s breathing quickened, her mind in a whirl.

Was this… a dream I had after getting drunk?

I actually dreamed of Boss Pei like that?!

Just as Ye Qingyu’s head throbbed with shock, Pei the Red Panda changed her sleeping position on the scholar tree.

In her sleep, a small sliver of her pink tongue peeked out, occasionally licking her teeth.

“Don’t…”

Unsure what she was dreaming of, the little red panda suddenly lifted a furry paw to cover her large ears, then rolled over.

A bag of peeled mangosteens hung from a branch of the scholar tree, swaying gently in the evening breeze.

…

Monday morning.

Ye Qingyu stood in front of the beautiful little building she hadn’t seen in four days, her mood a little complicated.

That day, when she had hosted Boss Pei at her home, she, the host, had actually gotten blackout drunk. It was truly impolite.

She had apologized on WeChat, and Boss Pei had replied with great gentleness and maturity: 【No need to apologize. I should be the one thanking you for your hospitality. I just had something come up suddenly, so I left first.】

This had put her somewhat at ease, but she still felt a vague sense of unease.

The bite mark on her neck was difficult to explain, yet also difficult to ask about.

“Ye Qingyu.” Jin Can’s voice came from behind her. “Did you have a good rest?”

Ye Qingyu turned around and met a pair of warm, puppy-dog eyes.

In them, she saw a bit of concern and… envy?

“I rested very well,” she blinked and replied in a gentle voice.

Jin Can sighed in relief and smiled. “That’s good!”

On Saturday night, when Sister Rong had floated back to the studio, she had been completely limp and listless, so weak that it took her two attempts to successfully climb the scholar tree.

In response to everyone’s concern, Sister Rong, lying on the scholar tree, had proudly lifted her fluffy head, her voice muffled and soft:

“I just had a little to drink, and I rubbed Ye Qingyu’s ears until she collapsed.”

Clap, clap, clap—

The small animals, unaware that the truth of the matter had been reversed, were immediately filled with awe. They gathered around the scholar tree and applauded, hailing Sister Rong’s might.

And as a comfort dog, Jin Can was a little worried for the “rubbed-until-she-collapsed” Ye Qingyu, but at the same time, she envied her for being able to have her ears petted.

Returning to the work area, the colorful fluffy heads—including the only undyed black one—all looked up. Ye Qingyu felt she was receiving the same level of attention as on her first day.

She blinked, a little confused.

Why is everyone looking at me with such complicated expressions… a mix of sympathy and admiration.

Even that cool, black-haired colleague had a strange sigh in her jade-green eyes.

Ye Qingyu sat down at her desk with a calm expression. Just as she was about to quietly ask Gu Yue on her right what was going on, she saw that her colleague was marveling at a novel on her computer screen, completely engrossed.

Noticing the gaze from her side, Gu Yue’s eyes remained reluctantly glued to the screen.

“Do you want to read this story? It’s Tun-Tun’s new work. She wrote it overnight on Saturday. It’s really good, highly recommended!”

Ye Qingyu subconsciously asked, “What story?”

Gu Yue scrolled the mouse, revealing the novel’s title: Red Panda’s Paws Strike! Human Ears Cannot Escape Ravishment.

“…” Ye Qingyu’s eyelashes trembled slightly.

She didn’t quite understand this kind of literary creation, but she remained respectful.

“Who is Tun-Tun? A popular web novel author?”

Gu Yue said, “The one sitting to your left.”

Completely caught off guard, Ye Qingyu immediately turned her head to the left—it was her quiet, zen-like colleague, Shui Zhu, who routinely sat motionless with an orange on her head.

Hmm, I never expected that the outwardly tranquil Shui Zhu actually had such a wild, emotional inner world.

Shui Zhu’s ears twitched. She glanced over at her. “I’ve shared the story in the group.”

Ye Qingyu couldn’t bring herself to refuse her colleague’s self-recommendation, so she said, “Okay, thank you.”

She opened WeChat and saw the new PDF file in the [Fluffy Road Detective Agency (Spring Shedding Edition)] group.

She tapped the screen to open it and casually browsed a snippet. Her gaze gradually froze:

【The red panda chuckled, her voice possessing an alluring magnetism. She lifted a paw and rubbed the human’s ear, rubbing until that ear grew softer and softer, red as if about to drip blood… The human’s ear thus became pregnant.】

Ye Qingyu’s pupils trembled.

What niche literature!

“How can an ear get pregnant?” she accidentally said her thoughts out loud.

Shui Zhu looked at the human quietly, facing all questions with composure—

She clicked into a music app, opened the comment section of a popular song, and saw that the entire comment section was filled with “My ears are pregnant.”

“I was alluding to this reference,” Shui Zhu explained.

Ye Qingyu: “…”

She could only nod mechanically to show she understood.

Okay, that’s very reasonable.

She turned on her computer to slack off, waiting uneasily for her beautiful boss to arrive at work.

…

At 9:30, Pei Rong pushed the door open.

The moment she walked into the work area, she saw the young woman immediately look up, her gentle eyes staring straight at her.

In that instant, her ears, hidden under her long, reddish-brown curls, couldn’t help but twitch.

Before raising a human, Pei Rong had envisioned a scenario where the human would peel mangosteens and cut apples for her, then knead her ears and rub her belly, satisfying all of the red panda’s needs.

But when her ears were actually petted last Saturday, she found that it was a strange, unforeseen sensation.

It made her feel so comfortable that her whole body went weak, yet so unbearable that every inch of her fur stood on end, making her want to curl up into a ball.

She wanted to resist, yet she wanted to ask for more.

But she didn’t know how to ask, or what to ask for. So she could only tremble helplessly, being rubbed by the human until she felt empty inside and out.

In the end, unable to bear it any longer, she had hastily taken a fierce bite of the human’s neck to break free and had fled with weak steps.

Of course, the fact that she had run away drunk all the way to the door, only to turn back at the last minute to pack up the mangosteens the human had peeled for her—these were all trivial details not worth mentioning.

In short, it seemed she didn’t want to experience it again, yet she also felt that the human could have rubbed a little harder.

It was truly a dilemma for a little red panda.