Chapter 4: You Can Eat Me

The narwhal frantically stopped Xiu, who was about to swim away with Wen Chu in his grasp. “Let’s talk this out. We are all the same kind, let’s not kill each other.”

Xiu let out a cold laugh. “I have nothing to say to him.”

The moment he opened his mouth, it was filled with tentacles. What else could he possibly say to Wen Chu?

Wen Chu was still asking, “What is cold-dressed jellyfish salad?”

Xiu deliberately frightened him, “It means slicing up a jellyfish and eating it.”

Wen Chu had an epiphany, then obediently extended his tentacles. “Then you can slice me up. Just remember to leave a small piece for me. I can grow very big again later, so you can eat me slowly.”

So he just wanted to eat him. Being eaten should also count as physical contact, right?

Xiu was indeed a good fish.

Wen Chu felt relieved.

Xiu, whose intimidation had failed: …

He looked at Wen Chu, who was still in a state of ignorance and genuinely didn’t seem to mind being made into a cold-dressed jellyfish salad. He suddenly found himself, who was getting serious with a jellyfish, a bit ridiculous.

Just then, the narwhal carefully spoke up, “Lord Siren, it’s not very easy to find a knife here.”

Xiu took the opportunity to back down, casually tossing Wen Chu away with a cold scoff. “You got off easy.”

Wen Chu, having been tossed away, wobbled in the water for a while before steadying himself.

“Are you not eating?” he asked, moving closer to Xiu’s shoulder again. “If you’re not eating, can we continue to be lovers?”

The narwhal nearly lost her balance.

What? What lovers??

What did Xiu say to Wen Chu while they were talking?

Under the narwhal’s shocked gaze, which seemed to say “So you’re that kind of Siren,” Xiu felt a vein begin to throb in his temple again.

He couldn’t really slice Wen Chu into a jellyfish salad. Xiu flicked his tail and moved away, directly avoiding Wen Chu’s re-approaching tentacles, and said solemnly to Wen Chu, “No.”

“Love is a very important matter. Something said so casually is not love. Even if we are not in a relationship as lovers, I will protect you. Stop saying things that can cause misunderstandings.”

As Xiu spoke, he explained to the narwhal, “It’s not what you think. This jellyfish has misunderstood the meaning of ‘lover’.”

Wen Chu was confused. “But we’ve already kissed. Shouldn’t we be lovers?”

Narwhal: “…”

They even kissed? How did they kiss?

The narwhal nodded blankly at Xiu, looking like she didn’t believe his pale explanation at all.

Wen Chu was still trying to stick to Xiu’s body. When Xiu didn’t let him touch his shoulder, he secretly swam downwards and carefully hooked Xiu’s finger with a tentacle.

Just then, the system, which had been silent all along, finally couldn’t bear it and spoke up: [He is a god of the ocean. It’s impossible for him to have a lover. You misunderstood the mission. Your mission is to survive, not to fall in love.]

Wen Chu was puzzled: [But if I don’t become lovers with Xiu, I can’t kiss him, and then I can’t survive. Why can’t I fall in love?]

System: […]

He shouldn’t have brought up this topic with a jellyfish that didn’t even know what “love” was.

System: [Forget it, let’s put this aside for now. Have you forgotten your initial mission? You are in great danger right now.]

Wen Chu paused for a moment, remembering what the system had said at the very beginning.

—”You are very hungry. The water quality here is poor and will soon accelerate the reduction of your lifespan. Please proceed to a safe place with sufficient food to grow as soon as possible.”

Almost the instant he remembered, the system panel popped up:
[Warning: Hunger level is too high. Lifespan will begin to decrease rapidly.]
.
Xiu felt the wet, sticky sensation on his finger. He looked down and saw the small jellyfish.

“Um…” Wen Chu looked at the system screen that had suddenly popped up and tugged at Xiu’s finger in a conflicted manner.

“If you have something to say, say it,” Xiu said coldly.

“I’m a little hungry,” Wen Chu said.

He looked at the light screen showing his rapidly decreasing life countdown and added, “Maybe not just a little.”

[Remaining Lifespan: 5 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes]
[Remaining Lifespan: 5 days, 11 hours, 10 minutes]
[Remaining Lifespan: 5 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes]

Why do I feel… dizzy…?

Xiu was very impatient. “If you’re hungry, go find something to eat. Do you want me to personally feed it into your mouth—”

His words came to an abrupt halt.

Because the jellyfish hooked on his finger, after saying that, swayed back and forth, and then its bell began to contract.

Like a wilted flower, Wen Chu’s hooked tentacle went limp. He suddenly lost his strength and fell, drifting away with the ocean current.

Seeing the jellyfish about to be swept away by the current, Xiu couldn’t care about anything else and immediately reached out to catch Wen Chu.

“Hey, jellyfish.” Xiu frowned, looking at the jellyfish spread out in his palm.

Has this jellyfish grown a size bigger? It can’t even fit in one hand this time.

But that wasn’t the point. Xiu shook Wen Chu again. “Wen Chu?”

Wen Chu showed no reaction, not even a faint pulsation of his bell.

The little jellyfish that had been chattering with a belly full of questions just a moment ago had suddenly fallen silent, as if its soul had been abruptly snatched away. Xiu couldn’t even sense a trace of life from him.

Xiu remembered what Wen Chu had said just now and immediately told the narwhal, “I’m taking him to find something to eat. Wait here for a moment.”

After he spoke, without giving the narwhal any time to reply, he quickly swam upwards, holding the jellyfish.

In the deep sea, even zooplankton was hard to find, let alone small fish. On the other hand, a layer of green algae grew on the water’s surface due to eutrophication, which could serve as food for the jellyfish.

The narwhal watched the siren’s anxious back and once again grew suspicious of Xiu’s earlier words.

A jellyfish and a siren… it’s not impossible for love to blossom?

So what did they talk about alone just now?
.
Wen Chu only felt a wave of darkness, and then he was in a pure white space.

At the back of the space were neatly arranged bookshelves, and in front of the bookshelves was a desk. He was lying on the desk in his jellyfish form.

Beside the desk lay a half-read copy of “Child Psychology.”

And in front of him was a red light screen, frozen at 5 days, 10 hours, and 50 minutes.

“This place is…”

System: [The system space.]

System: [Your lifespan was dropping too quickly. To prevent you from actually dying, I pulled you in here first. Your lifespan won’t decrease in here.]

Wen Chu focused on the wrong point. “So when you had the fish chase me at the beginning, you never intended for me to die? You could have saved me?”

System: [Watch your mouth.]

Wen Chu subconsciously replied: [Not talking.]

Oh, he wasn’t allowed to talk again. Then he wouldn’t.

Wen Chu was also in jellyfish form in the system space. He skillfully curled himself into a ball, wanting to lean against the edge of the desk.

He didn’t mean to act pitiful, but a jellyfish is soft and small. Looking at him like this, it added a sense of grievance, as if he had been bullied but didn’t dare to make a sound.

The system let out a dissatisfied “tsk.”

[Acting pitiful is useless on me. You should also give up the idea of falling in love with the mission target. As soon as you have enough lifespan, I’ll take you out of here and to the next world.]

Wen Chu still didn’t understand. “Why? I’ve already kissed him. I have to be responsible for him.”

System: […]

This was really asking too much of this jellyfish. It actually knew the word “responsible.”

System: [That’s not what a lover is. You don’t understand love.]

Wen Chu looked expectantly at the system panel. “Then what is love? can you tell me? I’m a fast learner.”

The system, worn down by Wen Chu’s persistence, said helplessly: [The point is not whether you understand love or not. The point is that he will never fall in love with you.]

[—Forget it, it’s useless for me to tell you this. You’ll know when you hit a wall with Xiu. Get out now. You’re not in danger anymore. You’re in the way here.]

Wen Chu: ?

Just as he was about to ask what happened, he saw the originally red light screen suddenly turn blue.

The moment before he was kicked out of the system space, Wen Chu hurriedly turned his head and saw a pair of well-defined hands picking up the half-read book on the table.

Faintly, a flash of long, golden hair seemed to pass by.

Before Wen Chu could see clearly, he felt a wave of darkness.

He was kicked out of the system space.

The cold seawater and the gentle ocean current once again swirled around him.

Wen Chu slowly opened his eyes, and the first thing he met was Xiu’s pair of transparent blue eyes.

Xiu was frowning, one hand parting his tentacles, the other hand holding a small seashell as a spoon, gently delivering green algae to his mouth.

To make it easier for the green algae to enter the jellyfish’s stomach cavity, Xiu was holding Wen Chu upside down. Because of this, when Wen Chu looked down along the other’s hand, the first thing he saw was the red mark on Xiu’s chest.

They had come to the surface of the sea. Half of Xiu’s body was out of the water. It was sunset, and the last rays of the sun made the murky water droplets on his body sparkle.

Such an untouchable god, yet bearing the marks he had left, was carefully feeding him with his head lowered, not even forgetting to keep him immersed in the seawater.

Divinity and gentleness could actually coexist in one person.

Wen Chu’s translucent body expanded slightly, the orange-red core inside contracting, like another heartbeat.

In fact, if he had a human form, his heart would have indeed skipped a beat at this moment.

“You’re awake?” Xiu noticed his movement.

“Mmm…” Wen Chu didn’t dare to look directly into Xiu’s eyes anymore.

The next moment, he felt the hand holding him loosen. He didn’t react in time and nearly drowned in the sea.

Xiu threw the small seashell spoon away and looked at him coldly, all the gentleness from before gone.

“If you’re awake, eat by yourself. How long do you want me to feed you?”

Wen Chu barely managed to swim steadily. He imitated what Xiu had done, using his tentacles to curl up the green algae and send it to the mouth in his center. He couldn’t describe what he was feeling now. He just ate the green algae while rubbing against Xiu’s body.

“Thank you,” Wen Chu said.

His body was slippery, leaving a trail of water on Xiu’s strong and beautiful abdominal muscles.

Xiu raised an eyebrow but only said, “I wouldn’t go so far as to watch a jellyfish starve to death in front of me.”

“Wen Chu. My name is Wen Chu,” Wen Chu insisted. “I have a name.”

“I know,” Xiu replied perfunctorily. “Is that a name some researcher gave you? Animals usually don’t have names.”

“I forgot… Ugh…”

As Wen Chu was eating, he suddenly spat out a large clump of green algae.

Xiu, who had been watching nonchalantly from the side, immediately tensed his fish tail. He caught the jellyfish that was drifting about from spitting out the algae and inspected Wen Chu from top to bottom, inside and out. He understood when he saw Wen Chu’s already bulging stomach cavity.

Wen Chu didn’t know what was wrong with him and still wanted to grab more green algae to eat. The moment he grabbed it, Xiu flicked his bell hard. “Don’t you know when you’re full? Stop eating.”

“What is ‘full’?” Wen Chu asked back.

Xiu: “…Did you not eat before?”

Wen Chu thought for a moment and gestured to Xiu, “I used to drink water from a plastic bag. The water from it was piped to my hand.”

An IV drip? Or a nutrient solution?

Xiu was even more surprised. Logically speaking, a jellyfish shouldn’t be able to receive an IV drip.

Could it be some new human experiment?

Seeing Wen Chu’s clueless appearance, Xiu didn’t press further. He pointed his finger at the stomach cavity inside Wen Chu’s transparent body. “This is your stomach cavity. Once this is full, you can’t eat anymore, understand?”

“Okay,” Wen Chu noted down seriously.

As Xiu held him, he took the opportunity to wrap his small tentacles around Xiu’s fingers, a completely clingy little jellyfish.

Xiu looked down at him and suddenly said, “Have you grown a little bigger?”

After surfacing, the jellyfish’s transparent body was fully visible, and the change in its size was particularly obvious.

Wen Chu remembered the eight hours of lifespan he had just gained and swayed his transparent body. “Yes, I’ve grown. If you kiss me, I can grow even bigger.”

“I can become a very, very big jellyfish. So, can you be my lover?”

He tried his best to explain with his limited vocabulary.

Xiu clearly didn’t believe a sickly jellyfish that could starve itself into a faint. However, Wen Chu’s words reminded him of the stinging pain on his chest and his still swollen lips from being deep-throated.

Doing such a thing with a jellyfish, especially when the other party was completely unaware, was a bit too much of a challenge to the Siren’s sense of shame.

“Impossible,” Xiu refused firmly. “At most, I will take you back to the shallows. After that, if you have no other wishes besides going to the Arctic or becoming my lover, don’t pester me anymore.”

Wen Chu was dumbfounded. “Why?”

“You’re annoying,” Xiu said. “And I’m very busy. You’ll be a nuisance if you keep following me.”

It was a good thing the narwhal didn’t notice this time. What if Wen Chu suddenly clung to him or drilled into his mouth while he was talking to other fish in the future…

Xiu didn’t dare to imagine such a socially suicidal possibility.

Wen Chu melted into a puddle in Xiu’s hand, clinging tightly to his fingers. “I won’t be a nuisance. I’m very useful. And we’ve already kissed, so we’re already lovers.”

Xiu gritted his teeth. “That was you forcing a kiss on me—and who taught you that kissing makes you lovers?”

Wen Chu felt as if he had been struck by lightning. “That doesn’t count as lovers either?”

He tried hard to think. “Then do you want to eat cold-dressed jellyfish salad? I can let you eat half, a big half. And then can you let me follow you?”

Xiu only felt a headache. He plucked Wen Chu from his hand and reiterated, “I don’t need to eat, and I won’t eat you. I just need you to stop pestering me.”

Xiu pointed to his own right chest. “Do you think doing this is right?”

Of course it’s not right. That’s why he wanted to heal and compensate Xiu.

But Xiu won’t let him touch him. Xiu is being unreasonable.

Wen Chu felt wronged.

At least give him a chance to compensate. He had already saved up ten hours of lifespan.

The sun slowly sank below the sea horizon.

The last trace of red disappeared, and night fell.

It was cold on the sea. When the cold wind blew, the jellyfish in Xiu’s hand trembled.

Xiu sighed and dived back underwater with the jellyfish.

Wen Chu tentatively reached out a tentacle to touch Xiu’s reddened right chest, trying to create an opportunity for himself.

Xiu reached out and slapped his tentacle away.

Wen Chu tried again to extend a tentacle, wanting to crawl from Xiu’s hand to his arm.

This time, Xiu directly dropped him and swam forward with a cold face.

Xiu felt he was just too prone to giving in. He always inexplicably indulged Wen Chu, which made the other push his luck. Even now that he had clearly refused, he was still thinking of touching him with his tentacles.

Wen Chu tried hard to chase after him. Fortunately, Xiu wasn’t really trying to ditch him and wasn’t swimming very fast. His tentacles whirred like a propeller, and he finally caught up.

Xiu had his back to him. The siren’s back had smooth lines, and his waist was lean and strong. Wen Chu directly attached himself to Xiu’s back.

The cold, wet sensation of the jellyfish sent a shiver down the siren’s spine.

Unable to bear it any longer, he turned around. “Are you a puppy? All you know is how to chase me?”

Wen Chu asked, “What is a puppy?”

Xiu: …

He knew he would get such an answer.

Xiu flicked Wen Chu’s bell, a thought of getting some revenge stirring.

He said to the illiterate jellyfish, “A puppy is you.”

Wen Chu had been lying on Xiu’s back. When Xiu turned around, he presented the injured area right in front of him.

He looked at the mark on Xiu’s chest, which had already started to redden and swell from the sting, swallowed, and said in a small voice, “I’m a jellyfish.”

Could it be that he was actually a puppy jellyfish?

Wen Chu pondered his species and once again stickily attached himself to Xiu.

His tentacles carefully caressed the area he had stung.

[Lifespan +1h]

This also added to his lifespan.

Wen Chu: [System, I want to heal him.]

[Lifespan -10h]
[Remaining Lifespan: 5 days, 0 hours, 34 minutes]

Wen Chu was afraid that the contact area was too small for the healing to be comprehensive, so like at the very beginning, he covered Xiu’s entire wound with his whole jellyfish body.

When the cold tentacles made full contact with the hot, sore, and numb wound, Xiu almost tore the jellyfish off his chest and threw it away.

But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to throw Wen Chu away.

Because in the next moment, the burning sensation of the sting disappeared, leaving only a cold, sucking sensation.

In this short half-day, he had been touched like this by the jellyfish too many times.

What was originally a trivial little sensation had, after repeated accumulation, become an existence that could not be ignored.

Wait… this is strange.

Xiu flicked his tail vigorously, trying to shake off the strange sensation on his scales.

How could he possibly have feelings for a jellyfish?

Wen Chu watched Xiu shake his tail, not understanding why, and continued to stick to him.

Although Xiu was healed, he had lost ten hours of lifespan in an instant. He had to seize the time to cling to Xiu.

Tentacles, mouth, bell… in short, everything except the stinging cells that could hurt people could be used to touch Xiu.

[Lifespan +1h]
[Lifespan +3h]

Huh, using his mouth part could add two extra hours.

Wen Chu wanted to suck a little more, but when he looked up and saw the faint blush behind Xiu’s ears and his frowning, pained expression, he immediately released his tentacles.

Xiu’s right chest was now as good as new, with some glistening mucus on it, looking exceptionally beautiful.

The strange sensation finally stopped. Xiu’s chest heaved, a faint anger on his face. “Wen Chu, you—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence.

Because the now-smaller jellyfish pressed its bell against his lips, its tone soft and cheerful:

“I’ve healed you. Don’t be angry anymore.”

“Take me with you. I won’t be any trouble. I’ll be a very good and useful puppy jellyfish.”

Author’s Note:

Xiu: (In a fit of anger, feeds the jellyfish a meal)