Her Tentacles 55

Chapter 55: Pain

Ever since Shu Yao had hung the heart-shaped glass bottle on her shoulder and had taken the little octopus to work for a day, for the next few days while their group was following up on this case, the little octopus had to go out with her every day, and even lived in that bottle—

Just waiting for her to take this bottle with her before she went to work in the morning.

But.

Shu Yao found that this octopus was becoming less and in less active. Sometimes it could stay in there with its eyes closed for half a day. If it weren’t for her occasionally picking up the bottle and calling it, and it would move its ears, Shu Yao would have thought it was dead.

And it was also eating less and less actively, without its initial good appetite. Recently, the marine life that Shu Yao had ordered to be delivered to her home to fill those water tanks had even been alive at home for three days.

“What’s wrong with you?”

This day.

Shu Yao returned home, unfastened the small bottle, and gently tapped the transparent glass wall with her index finger, asking softly.

Hungry.

So hungry, so hungry, so hungry…

Its stomach was empty. No matter how much of this disgusting food it ate, it was difficult to provide the little octopus with what it needed to grow a heart. Compared to the energy it consumed by eliminating these weak creatures that posed no threat to it, the energy it consumed by moving from this bottle, away from Shu Yao’s scent, was even more.

It could barely even maintain this perfect disguise.

But this tiny size was also not enough to support it leaving this nest to go out and find a prey that was to its liking, enough to allow it to accumulate energy to recover from its seriously injured state.

It was in a dilemma.

It could only use all its energy to maintain this disguise, and try to reduce its activity to consume less, as if this could delay the arrival of death.

…

Not getting a response from it, Shu Yao panicked a little.

Finding that the little octopus had not come out of the bottle again, she even took the initiative to put an opened clam into the round opening of the bottle. The soft food touched the little octopus’s tentacles, but it only moved slightly, with no more intention of eating.

Shu Yao decided to take it to the special department’s office tomorrow and ask the resident local expert to see what was wrong.

But the next morning.

When she picked up the bottle and observed it carefully, she found more bad signs.

One, two, three… seven.

She counted three times in a row, but could only count seven tentacles.

Where was the other one?

Shu Yao even looked into the large water tank where the other creatures were placed, trying to find if there was any creature that had secretly sneaked out of the water tank in the middle of the night to bully her pet.

However, she couldn’t see any clues for a while.

So she could only rush into the resident expert’s office with this glass bottle. Because her face was too ugly, the expert at first thought that the war of the sea monsters invading the land had started, and he also stood up in a panic—

“Where do I need to be transferred to now?”

The expert, who had no special abilities and could only provide theoretical research support for the mutation direction of these creatures, asked with considerable self-awareness.

Then, in Shu Yao’s slightly puzzled gaze, he saw her take out a glass bottle from her pocket, with an octopus… coiled inside?

“Hello, Director Zhang. Could you please help me take a look at its condition?” Her face was still cold, and only by looking carefully could one see that the pupils of her light-colored eyes were trembling.

Director Zhang: “…You just came to ask about this?”

Shu Yao nodded and held up the bottle closer. “It—it was normal last night. When I got up today, one of its tentacles was missing.”

Director Zhang sat back down and finally turned his attention to her octopus.

He looked at it for a few seconds. “Is it hibernating?”

“Mmm?”

Shu Yao looked at the big sun outside with a puzzled expression, and even took out her phone to check the real-time temperature in Nancheng now, twenty-five degrees Celsius.

…Hibernation?

Director Zhang pushed up the glasses on his nose. “From the perspective of temperature, it is indeed strange. Because this kind of creature, I mean, a more common octopus, usually lives in the area below one thousand meters in the sea. Because the seawater temperature is too low in winter, it will be forced to enter a state of hibernation—at the same time, because of insufficient energy and not being able to find prey, it will start to self-cannibalize, and even eat all of its own tentacles.”

He could tell at a glance that Shu Yao’s octopus was a Dumbo octopus that lived at a depth of about four or five thousand meters in the sea. He didn’t know how it could live in the water pressure and air on land, so he couldn’t make a definite conclusion about this suspected mutated species.

He could only give her relevant suggestions for her reference.

Shu Yao thought of the opened shell she had stuffed into the octopus last night, and it hadn’t eaten it.

“Oh, that means that shell provides less energy than it gnawing on its own tentacles.” Director Zhang explained again.

And so.

Shu Yao, who had been nervous when she came, when she left this office, her expression was only dazed.

She sat at her desk.

She even seriously placed the bottle with the little octopus in front of her, as if she were talking to herself, or asking it, “What on earth do you want to eat?”

Just then.

The flower fish came in from outside in a flurry, his expression a little pained. “Team leader, team leader, how about we go to the cafeteria for lunch later? I heard there’s a new dark cuisine called ‘fish head and pig blood pot.’ It’s very suitable for me to nourish myself today.”

Shu Yao lazily lifted her eyelids.

She saw the cotton swab pressed on the inside of his elbow.

As a parasite, his blood, like Shu Yao’s, a human with special abilities, also needed to be monitored and recorded. Shu Yao’s medical examinations were even more frequent than his, and she had to have more than a dozen tubes of blood drawn each time.

As he spoke, he first noticed the little octopus that Shu Yao had placed on the table. He immediately closed his mouth and took two big steps back, his eyes wide with fear. He began to gesture frantically to Shu Yao with his hands:

【Team leader, don’t suddenly put it out. It’s very scary!】

Shu Yao propped her cheek on one hand and didn’t look at him again. 【Don’t worry. It probably doesn’t have the strength to chase you and bite you now.】

Really?

The flower fish was half-believing, half-doubting.

Like that sea bird on the coast, spreading its wings and repeatedly testing the waves, he bounced around Shu Yao’s desk for a long time, and even cheekily stretched out the cotton swab he had just used to stop the bleeding, trying to poke the little octopus inside—

The little octopus’s tentacles moved slightly, as if it wanted to grab the cotton swab.

But in the end, it just half-opened its eyes, looked at Shu Yao, and after the flower fish had quickly withdrawn his action, that tentacle curled up in mid-air for a moment, and finally, it softly drooped down again.

It remembered.

Shu Yao had said that this prey could not be eaten.

…

The little octopus’s brief, clear-headed movement gave Shu Yao a sudden answer.

Her expression was stunned.

She thought of the nightmare she had had before, and for a moment, she sat at her desk, and did not come back to her senses for a long time. It wasn’t until the flower fish tremblingly asked her with a mental communication if she wanted to eat lunch that she just waved her hand listlessly.

Lu Ren and Guan Tong were still following up on this health product case. But because Shu Yao was really not suitable for infiltrating and obtaining information, she didn’t have to go out with them these past few days. It was better to help with some documents in the office.

Her desk was in the corner, and the other special department members would not come to talk to her if they had nothing to do. So for the whole afternoon, Shu Yao was at her desk, flipping through documents, typing on the keyboard, and occasionally looking at the little octopus that was motionless in the heart-shaped glass bottle.

It was still a bright, warm orange.

But it could only make Shu Yao think of a setting sun, and a dying bonfire.

It was a golden setting sun, the embers of a fire.

Every second that its color remained bright, it was telling her that it was about to die, perhaps in the next minute, the next second.

Until, without realizing it, it was almost time to get off work.

Shu Yao was reminded by the flower fish that a district was chasing a very cunning parasite, and that they might be called for support at night. She answered, and got up from her desk.

A sharp pain suddenly came from her abdomen.

It was probably because she hadn’t eaten lunch.

“Team leader, why is your face so pale?” the flower fish asked one more question. “Do you want me to take you home to rest first?”

Shu Yao had wanted to shake her head and refuse, but the pain became more and more severe. In the end, she could only nod with a pale face.

After returning home, she heated up a few slices of bread and drank some water. Only then did Shu Yao realize that it was her period.

It was probably because she had stayed up too late this month and had trained herself too hard. She, who had always had a peaceful period before, was having a particularly difficult time this time. After taking painkillers and waiting for the effect to kick in, Shu Yao poured a cup of hot water, squatted in the living room, her palm clinging to the edge of the sofa, and suddenly thought:

Why, when Lin Ran had changed her constitution, had she not evolved this troublesome thing away for her at the same time?

The rolling steam from the thermos blurred her vision.

Shu Yao just sat there in the empty living room, waiting in agony for the painkillers to work.

Until she heard a “thump” by her ear.

She slowly turned her head and saw the hot water droplets overflowing from the light-colored thermos on the coffee table. Then she moved over in a daze to see what had fallen into the cup.

The next second—

“!”

Shu Yao’s eyes widened. She looked at the little octopus, which had at some point been willing to leave that heart-shaped bottle, but had ended up falling into the thermos that had just been filled with a hundred-degree hot water.

Even its warm orange skin was now a reddish-orange with red edges.

She had never expected that before its forced hibernation due to hunger, it would suddenly choose to end its own life in this way. Shu Yao reflexively wanted to scoop it up, but her fingertips were scalded by the hot water.

“Ah!”

She shook her finger, which was stinging from the burn. It was very belated, but could it be that the little octopus was not really hibernating, but was just feeling down?

So this octopus really was, as the auction house people had said, on a hunger strike due to depression, and now it had chosen to kill itself in this way?

…

Shu Yao, who was suffering from menstrual cramps and at the same time facing her pet’s suicide, was at a loss for a moment.

She was like a frozen statue, holding her slightly red finger, squatting by the table, and was even starting to think about where to bury this octopus when—

A soft tentacle extended from the edge of the thermos.

Then, the little octopus, which was a little hot, crawled out of it and, with big steps, along Shu Yao’s back of the hand, her wrist, and quickly from her arm, it jumped onto her abdomen, where she was only wearing a short-sleeved home T-shirt.

It lifted the corner of her clothes, and then there was a ‘plop’ sound.

The little octopus was like a square-shaped warm baby. It stretched out its remaining seven tentacles, along with the thin membrane skin connecting the tentacles, and pressed them tightly against her abdomen.

The temperature, which was a little hot on her arm, at this moment, on her ice-cold lower abdomen, felt just right to transfer heat.

As soon as Shu Yao lowered her head, she could see the curve of her clothes being pushed up by the little octopus’s head, like a kangaroo with a little joey secretly hidden in its pouch. This shape looked very funny, but it was its way of trying its best to warm her.

But it was not a being that she had cherished and cared for.

From the first day she had brought it back, Shu Yao had only acted out of responsibility and obligation, like being given a puppy that she had once praised as cute by a friend on her birthday. In order not to let the puppy have a miserable life after coming to her home, she had tried to learn to take care of it.

She gave it food and drink, but that was all.

However, this little octopus was different.

The first day it came back with her, because Shu Yao was in a bad mood, it had jumped into the bathtub and had tried its best to perform tricks for her to cheer her up.

Even though the food she provided was not delicious, it had tried its best to finish it, and had also helped her clean up the house.

Now it was about to die, but because of her menstrual cramps, it had jumped into the hot water that might have scalded it to death, just to be able to warm her stomach for a few minutes.

It had not said a single word to Shu Yao.

But Shu Yao felt that, from the first day it had come to this home—

It had been loving her.

Even, it was loving her against its instincts.