Chapter 79: Belly Rubs

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

Zhou Yunchen’s hand paused for a moment. Then he speared a piece of beef with his fork and said, sounding casual, “I’ll have to taste it myself to know.”

Lu Yao watched him chew slowly and carefully, yet something about the logic didn’t add up.
Why would Zhou Yunchen need to taste it himself to know? The snow leopard and humans were two different creatures. Zhou Yunchen couldn’t access the snow leopard’s senses to compare them with his own. Relying on taste for that kind of judgment was pointless.

“Did you figure it out?” Lu Yao asked.

“Mhm.” Zhou Yunchen set down his fork and sat up straighter. “The taste is different.”

Lu Yao raised a brow. “You’re not the snow leopard. How could you possibly know?”

It sounded suspiciously like faulty reasoning. After all, he was the one who had asked the question, and now he was the one pressing with further doubts. A flicker of something moved in Zhou Yunchen’s gaze. He didn’t know what possessed him, but the words slipped out before he could stop them. “What if I were?”

Lu Yao’s expression didn’t change. He seemed to take the words as nothing more than a hypothetical. “If you were the snow leopard, then your judgment about taste would be credible. But outside of that—”

“Outside of that, what?”

Lu Yao pressed his tongue to his teeth, taking several seconds to frame his answer. “Humans and Earth animals can’t transform into one another. If a human could also be the snow leopard at the same time, then the genetic and material-level changes would overturn all existing biological science. I would probably contact the Federation Academy of Sciences’ biology division to study you.”

He noticed the twitch of muscle in Zhou Yunchen’s cheek and quickly added, “But I’m a conservative when it comes to scientific ethics. I believe individual human rights and collective interests must be protected in research. So I would never allow them to strap you onto a dissection table. At most, I’d let them draw a few vials of blood, pluck some hair, maybe run some behavioral tests. That would be about it.”

“What if they insisted on putting me on the dissection table?” It was a fair question. Lu Yao frowned, his mind racing. Zhou Yunchen could almost feel the sparks of thought flashing inside his head.

“There are a few approaches,” Lu Yao said after a pause. “First, you could mobilize public opinion and protests to pressure the Academy, though the results would be uncertain. Second, since you have your own military power, you could resist from the beginning—but that kind of action would easily cross Federation legal red lines, and it could leave you on the run. Third, you could use internal influence and audits to bring down the researchers. That would be difficult as well, tied up in political deals.

“But… there’s one more way. If you only told me, and no one else, I could simply keep it to myself. I’m not that stubborn.”

“Would the question still trouble you?”

Lu Yao popped another bite of lamb into his mouth. The high-calorie food seemed to fuel his thinking. “I’d just marvel at the wonders of nature.”

It suddenly struck Zhou Yunchen that in this whole discussion, “the snow leopard” had meant the species in a broad sense, not specifically the one living at Lu Yao’s side. Lu Yao was simply saying he wouldn’t mind if Zhou Yunchen were both human and snow leopard at once. That didn’t necessarily mean he could accept that the snow leopard he had raised all this time was secretly human.

Zhou Yunchen speared another piece of meat. “If you didn’t add salt and herbs to the snow leopard’s food, the taste he gets would be completely different from what we’re eating now. But for him, he must love the meat you feed him.”

“I love the food you cooked too,” Lu Yao said honestly. Zhou Yunchen froze, the faint night light unable to suppress the subtle joy rising on his face. Lu Yao rarely declared he liked anything. He never lied for the sake of politeness.

“Then eat more.” Zhou Yunchen placed several more slices onto his plate, watching as Lu Yao’s throat bobbed with each swallow.

Lu Yao didn’t overthink it. He simply ate, bite after bite, until the plates were empty. When the household robot cleared the dishes, he stood and realized he had eaten too much. The portions Zhou Yunchen had prepared originally would have filled him just right. But one had grown greedy, and the other eager to serve. Time had flown, and suddenly he was stuffed.

Zhou Yunchen, feeling a little guilty, took him for a walk in the courtyard to digest. They had only gone a few steps before Lu Yao doubled over slightly, short of breath, stomach cramping from being too full. He had no choice but to stop.

Zhou Yunchen helped him into a lounge chair by the pool. The chair was entirely metal, without cushions or pillows, but its ergonomic design molded perfectly to the body. Reclining on it felt almost like lying on springy clouds.

“Want me to rub it for you?” Zhou Yunchen asked.

“Mhm.” A faint hum slipped from Lu Yao’s throat. It had been far too long since he’d eaten so much, and even his esophagus felt blocked. “Will it help? Should I take something for digestion?”

Zhou Yunchen pressed a warm palm to his stomach and began to rub slow circles. “Do you have any medicine here?”

“No.” Lu Yao had lived on nutrient solutions for years, never once needing to worry about indigestion.

“Then this is all we can do.” The autumn night was quiet on the mountaintop. The moon slipped in and out of clouds. Zhou Yunchen’s palm was the only source of heat against Lu Yao’s body, like a small coal fire resting there.

For all his complaints, Lu Yao hadn’t eaten that much by normal standards. His stomach still looked flat, though the muscles beneath the skin felt slightly firm from being full. But as Zhou Yunchen rubbed, the tension softened.

“Even if you rely mostly on nutrient formulas, you should add more solid foods to your diet,” Zhou Yunchen murmured. “Otherwise your teeth and stomach will weaken.”

Lu Yao hummed vaguely, whether in agreement or just comfort, it was hard to tell. He lay back in the chair with no guard up at all, head tipped against the metal, eyes closed in relief. The buttons of his leather jacket were all undone, and the white shirt beneath bunched into messy folds under Zhou Yunchen’s hand.

He looked for all the world like a cat, belly bared. A black-backed, white-bellied cow cat. Zhou Yunchen began to understand how Torque, that little white cat, won Lu Yao’s favor just by flopping onto the floor. Every time Lu Yao finished rubbing Torque’s belly, he would scoop the kitten up and kiss him.

Zhou Yunchen was no different. Half-kneeling beside the lounge chair, the rippling water mirrored his silhouette as he leaned closer and closer toward Lu Yao. When Zhou Yunchen’s breath brushed his cheek, Lu Yao cracked his eyes open just enough to see those striking features closing in. Then Zhou Yunchen’s lips pressed against his own.

The kiss carried a trace of chill at first, but the heat beneath it quickly burned away the cold. Lu Yao’s hand slid to Zhou Yunchen’s neck, his thumb stroking back and forth in gentle rhythm.

The alpha seemed to take that as encouragement. His kiss deepened, and even the hand that had been rubbing Lu Yao’s stomach to ease digestion began to slide upward, reaching for the sharp line of his ribs.

A faint current of alpha pheromones seeped into the night air. Lu Yao’s lashes quivered, but before he could react to that trace of scent, a comm signal cut between them.

“I need to answer this,” Lu Yao murmured. “It’s Elaine.” Zhou Yunchen had to pull back, and the night wind cooled Lu Yao’s flushed skin. “Dr. Elaine?”

“Yes, it’s me. I heard General Zhou had returned to New Blue Star, so I wanted to ask when you plan to start scent-adaptation training.”

Lu Yao tilted his head toward Zhou Yunchen. “How long will you be staying?”

“About a week.”

Elaine caught the faint background noise. “General Zhou is with you?”

“Yes, he’ll be here for a week.”

“This late at night, and you’re still together… Am I interrupting?”

Remembering what had just happened, Lu Yao answered honestly. “A little.”

Elaine fell silent for a beat, her tone odd when she spoke again. “Lu Yao, before you finish your full adaptation training, I don’t recommend you two become intimate. Unless you’re fully prepared for emergency medical intervention, I’d remain cautious about your trauma re-experiencing disorder recovery.”

Lu Yao choked on his reply. He wanted to say that he and Zhou Yunchen hadn’t intended to do anything tonight, but the searing hand pressed to his ribs made that explanation sound far from convincing. What had just occurred already felt like the prelude to a storm.

When he and Zhou Yunchen agreed to meet tonight, they hadn’t said they would, but neither had they said they wouldn’t. “I understand,” Lu Yao told Elaine. “Can we schedule the training for tomorrow?”

He glanced at Zhou Yunchen, who gave a slight nod. Elaine agreed on the other end of the comm. By the time the call ended, the mountain wind had scoured away every trace of warmth between them. The dining table in the house had already been cleared by the service robot, the kitchen spotless, as though none of it had ever happened. “You—” Lu Yao started.

“You should rest early. I won’t bother you tonight.” Zhou Yunchen knew there were no guest rooms in this villa’s main building.

“Take my flyer,” Lu Yao said. Zhou Yunchen gave a quiet nod. Lu Yao went inside, returned with his uniform and coat, while D guided the flyer onto the landing pad. Zhou Yunchen wanted to say more before leaving, but a gust of wind swept Lu Yao’s long hair upward. Another flyer was cutting through the night fog toward them. Lu Yao looked up. “It’s Mo Feng.”

The wind drowned his words. Zhou Yunchen accepted his uniform, climbed into the flyer, and yielded the landing space for Mo Feng. The engines roared to life, and just before departure, Lu Yao saw Zhou Yunchen mouth a single phrase through the glass. —See you tomorrow.

Mo Feng’s flyer settled down. The drifting leaves in the air finally had a chance to fall quietly. The moment Mo Feng stepped off, he shoved a warm little white cat into Lu Yao’s arms. Torque was sound asleep, immune to any movement.

“Something wrong?” Lu Yao asked.

Mo Feng gave him a sharp look. “I came to return your cat. Have you really gotten so wrapped up in your man that you forgot about him? You used to never leave your beautiful kitten alone for hours without a word.”

“Torque was with you. I had nothing to worry about.”

Mo Feng’s expression shifted again, finally settling into something subtle and hard to read. “So… you really are back together with Zhou Yunchen?”

“Yes.” Lu Yao stroked Torque’s back.

“Well, General Zhou is reliable enough, though he’s often away at war. You two may end up spending more time apart than together.”

“That’s fine. We still have a long future ahead of us.”

The flyer carrying Zhou Yunchen drifted farther and farther away. Its engine glow was dim compared to a mecha or starship, and the pale blue exhaust quickly vanished into the vast night sky.

Author’s Note:

A little belly-rubbing…

 

 

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