Richel waited for the boy to answer. If he had a shy crush on her and confessed it in his adorable, embarrassed way, it would be like a dog putting on its own collar and handing the leash to its master.
She anticipated this moment, her eyes misting over, her breath trembling. Her scalp felt tingly, and her brain felt like it was boiling… Ah, the leash. Hurry up and hand over the leash, you cute little puppy. Hurry and wag your tail for me!
Wang Yue saw Richel’s flushed face and her intoxicated expression, and a sense of dread washed over him. This person is a total freak!
His inner self wailed: I’m just a high schooler! Why do I have to go through this?!
His current situation could be summarized in one sentence: having to breed with a psycho before becoming a gender-swapped undercover agent in a witch academy.
His logic: I can’t stand the Bishop controlling me, and I can’t accept a poor woman being forced to throw herself at me. I want to use this chance to turn her, to sow discord between her and the Bishop, and change my fate.
The psycho’s logic: I think I’m in love with him. I want to pull out his bones, roll his flesh into a ball, leave two cute little ears sticking out, and roast him over a fire until he’s sizzling with oil. If I can restrain the urge to actually do it, then he must be my true love.
Sweat beaded on Wang Yue’s forehead; his palms were soaked. He couldn’t find a way to deal with a lunatic, so he could only pray. He was like a farmer standing by a parched field in midsummer, begging the west wind to bring a little rain while the sun continued to bake the earth.
Richel stepped closer until her nose was almost touching his face. She gritted her teeth and said, “We’ll deal with the Bishop later. First, let’s make the baby…”
“Wait! No! If the kid asks later, ‘Everyone else has a dad, where’s mine?’ how are you going to answer? Are you going to tell the kid, ‘You don’t have a dad, you have two moms’?”
“I can’t wait to see the kid’s face then. It’ll be magnificent.”
–
Wang Yue sadly realized that he couldn’t win against Richel.
This girl possessed monstrous strength. Her small hand gripped his wrist like an iron shackle, dragging him directly into an inn. Under the strange gaze of the innkeeper, she tossed down a Golden Spike coin.
He struggled desperately, his feet dragging two lines across the floor, but he was inevitably hauled into a guest room.
Bang!
Richel slammed the door shut with such force that dust fell from the ceiling. She glanced at the room’s furnishings: an old wooden table, a chest of drawers, an armchair, and a double bed. The bedding looked clean enough.
She stood still for a moment, curling her fingers as if thinking. Then, she paced the room restlessly before finally stopping. With an embarrassed, somewhat sheepish look, she asked, “How do you make a baby?”
“You don’t know?”
“How would I know something like that?!” Richel snapped back, sounding perfectly justified.
Wang Yue breathed a sigh of relief. If she didn’t know, that was great. Wonderful. He had dodged a bullet.
Even though he knew, he wasn’t going to say a word.
He found it strange. How did things turn out like this?
At first, it was the Bishop forcing him and Richel together. Now, Richel was the one hungering for him? Going from victim to perpetrator—was this a distortion of humanity or a collapse of morality?
“Hey, hey, move a bit.”
Richel poked his face with her finger, giggling as if they were close.
The two of them were very close together. The girl’s hair tickled his neck, and a warm fragrance wafted past his nose; it smelled wonderful.
Seeing him shrink back, not daring to move, Richel pursed her lips in a cute expression. “You wait here.”
She pushed the door open and left, returning a moment later with a box. It was about a foot square and deep red.
Wang Yue peeked at the box, trying to guess her intentions. This woman was so deranged that nothing she brought out would surprise him.
Richel pinched a square peg protruding from the corner of the box and pulled it out like a game of Jenga. The four walls of the lacquered box fell away, revealing a silver cup.
Inside the cup, Wang Yue saw a lump of flesh about the size of a ping-pong ball. It wasn’t dead; filament-like synapses extended from it, constantly squirming, pulling, and sticking. Embedded within the folds of the core were strange, black, spindle-shaped crystals.
“Since you don’t agree, I won’t force you. But you must leave something behind. This is an ancient relic called a ‘Living Husk.’ I will use it to create a fake pregnancy and fool the Bishop.”
With that, she ran a fingernail across her palm. A line of blood split the skin, and crimson droplets fell onto the Living Husk, which soaked them up like a sponge.
Then, she carried the silver cup toward Wang Yue and grabbed his wrist, taking his blood in the same manner.
As the blood mingled, the core suddenly constricted. The filaments retracted, and the surface cells differentiated into a ridged structure resembling a walnut.
