The sound of scuttling is heard overhead. It had started lightly – an inaudible tap against glass, a dull pitter-patter that sounded more like rain – and in deep sleep, Noah doesn’t register it. The vehicle he’s in is completely shrouded in black. In nighttime, barely any slivers of light catch inside and the windows, too, are blocked off by reinforced steel.
The young man is cramped on the backseats with barely enough space to move. The makeshift bed is hard as rock and cushioned only by a thin layer of suede – extremely uncomfortable, and Noah’s furrowed brows are indication. He shifts his body, tries to curl to the side but only bumps into a corner in return, eliciting a soft noise of pain from his lips.
Finally, his eyes open slowly, hazed in lethargy. Noah blinks for some long seconds, tries to adjust to the darkness, stares up at the hood of the vehicle… completely lost. Confusion turns into unknown turmoil, as he sits up. Multi-colored orbs flicker over the surroundings (just darkness), over the barricaded windows, the windshield covered by a thin veil, the roof that’s vibrating slightly but enough to induce full panic.
And the panic is very visible on his features – temple sheened partially with sweat, brows scrunched, mouth parted for shuddering exhales. He’d been sweating in his sleep, but the temperature is numbingly cold. He’s dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and his frame is also draped with a large black jacket. Not his. It scents of sandalwood.
The scuttling gets louder, closer and more insistent. Not raindrops, for the sound is only heard on one side.
Stranded in the middle of nowhere, coordinates unknown, and completely inebriated. Noah tries to calm but to no avail. In post-heat, his body gives small shudders and his mind seeks for comfort – there is no comfort here, however, not in this vehicle that is completely empty. Noah grips onto the armrest so hard his knuckles have turned white. Vulnerability is not hidden in the slightest.
And vulnerability is not pretty on his features either, for Noah had never been fragile – not like this, when he remains rooted in place out of sheer panic. He takes another shuddering breath and closes his eyes before opening them again. His mouth is parted for mini exhales and indeed, he is fully aware of his patheticness.
“…Xie Xing,” he whispers, his throat constricting. “Calm down.”
As though the words snapped him out of certain reverie, Noah raises one arm to wipe at the sweat on his forehead. Every action is excruciatingly slow and his head throbs in pain. The vehicle roof rattles louder this time – any more and it may just collapse under.
With a low sigh, he scours the vehicle, straining his eyes to find anything of use. He doesn’t have to look long at all. On the seats in front of him is a familiar black backpack and an equally as familiar black knife, sheathed. Right next to those is a zinc handgun. Purposefully placed for his usage.
Tentatively, Noah reaches for the weapons. Indecisiveness shows on his face – brows still furrowed, lips pursed, faint inquiry in his eyes as he feels up the pistol. The firearm has seen a decade and more of usage, but the maintenance is perfect. The model is customized, the handle specked with black diamond coating and the backstrap with unique aluminum ridges. Molded a very specific way, reminiscence of a pair of firm calloused hands.
The design of it, however, doesn’t match the colonel’s personality. The man is not one to mod it with black diamonds, nor is he one to care for aesthetics of all things and… Noah frowns. The model may be at least two decades old. He rotates it in his hands out of sheer curiosity. An ounce of moonglow very, very subtly dithers in from the windshield, catching onto the barrel of the gun. The engraving is worn out and scratched, but Noah sees the three letters exceptionally clearly: ‘XIE.’
There isn’t time to be lost in thought. Whatever creature slamming at the vehicle roof is causing him a bigger headache, and Noah is still experiencing post-heat symptoms. Bouts of nausea, cold sweat yet feverish breaths, unresolved hormone imbalances that… if he focuses on too heavily, the tingling on his neck will get increasingly difficult to bear. The hickeys on his skin prickle in reminder, but Noah is not willing to address them. Not at all.
He shakes himself back to alacrity. Any more miscellaneous thoughts and he’d be drowned in a deluge.
He unclicks the safety on the gun and unlocks the vehicle door. His mind conjures up tens of tactical plans before combat – that creature, whatever it is, is large enough to shake the vehicle, weighty enough for its movements to be heard. At least six legs, judging from the uneven scuttling. An arthropod, perhaps, though Noah is very uninterested in seeing it.
His face is already paling visibly.
Before he opens the door, he glances inside the vehicle once more, desperately hoping for… a certain person to manifest out of thin air. In futility, of course, because while Yang Rong may have needlessly inhuman strength, he isn’t an otherworldly phantom either.
Suddenly, a screech is heard overhead, and Noah physically jolts in, admittedly, fright. Leave it to Yang Rong to throw him, an omega suffering from post-heat, alone inside a dingy military vehicle without a proper light source and without proper indication of where he is. Not even a note is left on the backseats. There is a key left in the ignition, however. He doesn’t ponder more on it.
He does know he’s infinitely close to having a heart attack – Noah, with his unfortunately keen sense of hearing, has confirmed that the creature pounding on the truck is indeed a large, carnivorous insect.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“…Yang Rong,” Noah whispers angrily, very much hoping to alleviate his fear. “When you come back, I am going to kill you…!”
He does have pride, however, and he isn’t one to stand pale-faced inside the vehicle, looking all the more a damsel-in-distress as the insect drills holes into aluminum plating, ready to devour him whole (highly exaggerated, but Noah’s insect vision has always been a tad distorted). Noah thinks he’d rather be unconscious for another week.
It is with a minute of self-reflection, another minute of grueling self-pity, and another minute of frantically rechecking his handgun that Noah finally acts.
He wrenches the door open and immediately sprints outward, trying to gain a good distance before he turns around and…
He’s met closely with the most monstrous, bile-oozing, beady-eyed thing with four antennas and eight legs (not six). Noah isn’t even sure what sort of grotesque mix it is and neither does he want to sneak another look at it. It is only unfortunate that his dynamic vision registers the thing in its entirety in only a millisecond – an oily-bodied beetle with waved antennas that stretch at least a meter long, thrown into the half-body of a wasp with the ugliest banded wings he’d seen.
Noah isn’t one to spew profanity, but his mind is racked with a trillion colorful swears and his body, entirely drenched in cold sweat. Especially when the creature lets out a shrill screech, flaps its wings and goes toward him.
Pc tlr qjclm, Rbjt fwqalfr atf fcalgf milq ja lar ojmf. Cmmegjms yf vjwcfv – lo atf jgatgbqbv jvnjcmfr bcf wbgf lcmt, Rbjt kbeiv yf rtbmxfv lcab j rajaf bo mjgvljm jggfra.
Without wanting to even look at it, Noah pelts it with enough bullets to massacre a whole colony – it is only regrettable, his distraught mind supplies, that he’s equipped with a simple pistol and not a multi-barreled, rapid-firing gun. The creature’s head is blasted into smithereens and green, foul-smelling hemoglobin spurts from the wounds, staining bits of his shirt. Noah’s pale face turns deathly pale and nearly aglow.
Kb wjxf wjaafgr wbgf agjewjalhlcu, atf gjvlbjmalnf yeu lr ralii jilnf. Lfjvifrr klat lar ifoa klcu rcjqqfv jqjga, yea ralii wbnlcu abkjgv tlw lc j afggloslcu rqffv. Olwyr oijlilcu jcv jii. Rbjt, cbk bea bo jwwb, mjc bcis gfrbga ab qeiilcu bea atf mbibcfi’r yijmx vjuufg. Lf lr rb ogjcalm tf rijrtfr ja la gjcvbwis klat ecobmerfv fsfr, tlr qeqlir mbcraglmalcu klat fnfgs becmf bo ugffc yibbv atja rqgjsr bcab tlr abgrb.
Finally it dies and a part of Noah dies along with it. Very decisively, he throws the bloodied knife onto the floor, takes off his shirt and hurls it onto the muddied ground as well, right next to the beetle’s corpse. Ignoring the wintry gusts that sting his exposed skin, Noah skitters ten meters away and proceeds to crouch down on the floor. He buries his head in his arms. A second turns into a minute of him simply frozen in position, basked in white moonlight.
In absolute delirium, he doesn’t hear the pavement crinkle in front of him, the pebble stones rolling along with a pair of footsteps.
“…Yang Rong,” his voice is muffled but entirely quivered, “I am really going to kill you…”
Then a low cough is overheard.
Clearly Yang Rong’s voice. The tenor of it is unmistakable – deep and low, rough in all the right intonations. It has the sort of magnetism that draws the listener in, and the sort of inexplicable comfort that Noah preens for.
“…Kitt—little fox,” the man says slowly, testingly. “Truth be told, Rong-ge isn’t quite informed of the situation yet… But I will admit to my wrongdoings. I arrived as quickly as I could after hearing gunshots, but Noah… why have you taken off your shirt? It’s unsafe. There may be voyeurs here.”
Noah slowly lifts his head to look at him. An indecipherable gaze – reddened, slightly widened eyes, puffed rims. Then, he puts his head down again and refuses to speak.
“…What’s wrong, kitten—little fox,” Yang Rong corrects, also crouching down to meet him ground-level. The man places several rifles on the ground to lighten the load. He maintains a distance, but his alpha scent is still strong enough to be registered in Noah’s heightened state of panic. “Whatever it is I had done, I will take responsibility… Look at your Rong-ge’s sincere expression, hm? Are you perhaps angry I left you alone? I didn’t mean to, little fox, but Rong-ge had to resupply else we’d be stranded with no fuel nor weapons.”
Yang Rong coaxes gently, the excuses coming out his mouth in calculated speed. “Could it be that you’re still in heat? A fever? Is your constitution really so frail—” Yang Rong cuts himself off with a light cough and continues, “—No, nevermind that. Your Rong-ge will not say any more. I suppose I will study more on aftercare…”
“…” Noah finally murmurs, very quietly, “…I feel sick.”
When he lifts his head again, he catches Yang Rong looking entirely confused. The latter’s mental cogs are visibly spinning and from the strange twist of his handsome features, the thoughts he holds are entirely off the mark.
“A sickness…” Yang Rong repeats with uncertainty, biting the bottom of his lip. “I admit your Rong-ge isn’t a very accurate judge. Some more elaboration may be needed before I form my own conjectures. I have a suspicion, but the probability of it is… incredibly low… almost impossible, I believe, unless there had been some kind of mistake two nights ago but I wasn’t aware of when—”
“Nauseous,” Noah clarifies. “I want to throw up.”
“…” Yang Rong stiffens. His braincells are probably working overtime now, conjuring up tens of thoughts and throwing out tens more, only to arrive at one very unfortunate conclusion. After a long moment of silence, he opens his mouth to say, “…I will take responsibility.”
Noah doesn’t understand the implication. He raises himself to a standing position, steadying his still-very-frazzled self.
“Over there,” Noah says softly, his eyes still downcast, unwilling to spare another glance behind him. “…Take care of it, Yang Rong.”
Yang Rong takes a few seconds to process the words… and when he does, an intense wave of relief washes over his face. Visibly. He gives a low cough and turns to examine the insect corpse. In comparison to Noah’s still-paling face, there is no sign of distress on Yang Rong’s – in fact, the man hardly seems to find a problem with the setup.
The insect, still twitching postmortem, is overlooked in lieu of Noah’s discarded shirt. A few meters to the left is Yang Rong’s jacket, fallen off at an unknown time mid-battle. Then a little further, the dagger that Noah had thrown away unthinkingly.
“Noah, a little bloodstain is no problem to get rid of,” the man says as he peers at the clothes. He also gets up to a sitting position and stares at Noah, his dark green eyes trailing over every sign of distress. “Rong-ge has never done proper laundry before, but rest assured your shirt will be cleaned good as new. Floral detergent if you’re inclined. My hands are more efficient than a laundry machine.”
“I don’t want it anymore,” Noah says with a light shake of his head. He’s about to say something else before he hears a screech from behind him, hears more scuttles and he immediately flings himself forward, latching onto Yang Rong’s sleeve. The fabric is dark and clammy, though he doesn’t realize it in his frenzy – because his pride and rationale be damned, Noah is wholly unprepared for moving corpses.
“…Colonel…Yang…!”
Yang Rong stiffens immediately upon contact. In frenzy, Noah doesn’t realize the man is battered and bleeding until he inhales a whiff of pungent alpha pheromones. However, all other thoughts are secondary to his current crisis. Noah hides behind the man’s broad frame and peeks out from his shoulder – an unfortunate choice, because now Noah is front-facing an amalgam of hatching insect eggs, all of them protruding out of the deceased anomaly’s womb.
Noah convulses in despair, clutches onto Yang Rong even tighter, and lets out a pained noise. “—Colonel Yang…! Um…!”
“Yes, I am here,” the man responds after a long while. “Noah, I see what you are looking at and I am well aware of your insect aversion. However, it is distracting for you to hold onto me like this—”
“—It is radioactive,” Noah only gasps out, unwilling to let go. “Colonel Yang, it is larger than a rhinoceros. It is a thousand times the size of a normal cockroach, and if taking into consideration its mass, the insect can easily crush us with one leg.”
“Kitten—“ Yang Rong tries to coax. “Little fox, the anomaly is a fifth your size. No bigger than a small cat. It is dead, it cannot harm you, and what’s left of it are eggs the size of my toes. You may have exaggerated the radioactivity of them as well – if examined closely, the insects aren’t as unusual as your reaction makes it out to be. Blister beetle mutations are rather common in—”
“—Colonel Yang, it has eight legs,” Noah says insistently, still unwilling to yield. In fact, his grip only gets firmer, rooting the man in place. Heterochromatic eyes are scrunched in fear, his irises glowing pitifully in the dark. And that mouth of his had never uttered Yang Rong’s name nor his title so much in one night. “Colonel Yang, get rid of it…”
Yang Rong cannot see his expression, but the man caters anyway. “…Yes, yes, little fox, Rong-ge will get rid of it for you… Shh, take a deep breath, hm? Noah, you are abnormally anxious – a reaction like this is rare from you. What’s wrong? Is it your heat cycle? Perhaps you do have a fever?”
Noah, entirely frenzied, only shakes his head and burrows himself deeper onto Yang Rong’s shoulder. Belatedly, he realizes he is breathing too rapidly, taking in short inhales and just as stuttered exhales – too anxious even for entomophobia. It is a prickling sensation in his head, a lingering need to latch onto Yang Rong, an alpha, in post-heat – and Noah isn’t sure if it is simple physiology that binds him.
Nonetheless, he inhales deeply into Yang Rong’s musk, spiced sandalwood, a low soothing note of vetiver.
“Don’t…know…” Noah musters out, his body still quivering – perhaps not from fear, but from another, more needy emotion. “…Yang Rong, I dislike being confined in an unknown place. It’s dark and I… There wasn’t anyone.”
His fingers are trembling on the colonel’s shirt. It is pitiful and very, very pathetic. Noah’s irrationality spirals him into a restless state – heart palpitating, body convulsing, his head throbbing. The overreaction is concerning for sure, but Yang Rong seems to sense his turmoil. The colonel gently presses on Noah’s shoulder (tacitly telling him to calm) and now, Noah is faced with a pair of viridescent green eyes.
“Little fox,” Yang Rong murmurs quietly. Moonglow trickles from above, bathing them in subtle hues of white. For a while, they forget about the cold wintry gusts, the arthropods in front. The insect screeches are tuned out in lieu of the colonel’s voice – low and matched with the night, an edge of command that is coaxing all the same. “It is Rong-ge’s fault for leaving you alone. But when you hold onto me like this, I believe you mix fear and need. Do you hold feelings for me, Noah, or is it only desperation? If you look at Rong-ge in the eyes…”
The colonel reaches to touch him – the hand doesn’t reach far, however, before Noah reflexively flinches. A subtle quiver of his eyelashes, a very subtle hint of hesitance on his micro-expression (not even one he controls), and Yang Rong retracts back (the man had fully anticipated this as well). Noah doesn’t avoid him, but Yang Rong doesn’t touch him.
With a resigned smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, Yang Rong whispers, “It seems to me the latter, Noah. And it is why I am hesitant to claim you as mine.”
Like that, their bodies separate. Yang Rong equips his rifle and proceeds to clean up the amalgam of insects. Noah stands watching the colonel’s broad back, his own expression indecipherable, his body trembling less, but his pulse racing deafeningly quicker.
The rapid firing creates sparks all around, the gunshots going off like heavy fireworks. Yang Rong tosses several matchsticks at the completely pulverized insects. When the embers rise from the ground, the air billowing in smoke, the man turns and gives Noah a light wink – “handled it entirely, little kitten,” he seems to say with the irritable drawl Noah is more than familiar with.
His green eyes are shaped into crescents, his mouth curved in tandem, and belatedly, Noah wonders when Colonel Yang had become far less imposing.
Author’s special announcement!
hello hello!! -clears throat-
as i may have mentioned before… several authors and i have decided to start a discord server to build a writing + reading community for original boys’ love works! we have also decided to create a mini carrd website to put personally-curated BL novels on there so that it’ll be easier for readers to browse through. it’s been a project we’ve been doing for some months, and we finally have a working foundation!
to know more about our goals and whatnot, please take a look at our carrd site here: https://thedailyeggplant.carrd.co/
and to join our discord where you can connect with fellow authors, readers.. and me, please visit the site and navigate through the link!
we want to promote OG BL webnovels, and build a friendly community, where we’d be able to bond with other writers + readers… and one day, hope that original BL will be less stigmatized! thank you as always and i hope to engage with you more ~ ~ !
and to entice you into joining, here is a clickbait ad of yang rong with kim kardashian lips, meme’d by yours truly, drawn by val.
This chapter almost got me cry 😭😭😭
That subtle “rejection” is just hdbehssjsjwbs hurts me so bad
hehe, but i promise theyll get together sooon
Noah’s strong aversion towards insects reminds me so much of Colonel K from The Virtuous Omega Disguised as the Vicious Colonel 😭🤣
Oh God, I wish they’ll have kids in the future 😪
noah:（；¬＿¬)
hahahahahahahahahahaha
Thanks for the chapter…. <3
You know what… although I’m often dissing YR in each of my comments, actually I thought that He’s quite save-able/redeemable even from the start of the story… for he’s a clown, compared to ‘something’ like Leo [Interstellar Super Doctor] or Yuan Xi [Mecha Slave Contract]…
see?! yang rong is a good boy 😭😭 (-tries very hard to convince myself this as well-)
Haha… but sadly, YR’s EQ growth progress is proportional to his number of active braincells.
Well, compared to Leo’s face-slapping events, YR had it better (or NO actually, YR is quite thick-faced, so no face-slapping event will affect him immediately)… but the result was He still rubs Noah in the ‘slightly’ wrong way
OMS
Rong ge UwUwUwUwU HOW R U SO AWESOME!!!!! love me instead ah😍
Thank you for the chapter, i joined the discord (@LanYue)
aaaa i recognize 💕 thank youuu, i will send you a yang rong by snail mail
😮😍🙈😏 PLEASE DO
Peak husband material is when he gets rid of insects for you 😍 Claim him quickly Noah!
Thanks for the chapter!
nom him quickly, noah! eat him up!
I’ve gotta admit Yang Rong was a little cute this chapter!
thanks for the update <3
The Colonel reminds me of those anime girls who say, “B- b- b- but we kissed.. W- wh- what if I get pregnant ???”
YR really be ready to get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness lmaooo, I love it! The flinch, however, is like a stab to the gut, it really is. I get given some lovely fluff where Noah clings to YR as YR hopelessly wants to call him a kitten, but continuously corrects himself (which I find unbearably funny and cute) and then. The flinch, that tiny little detail, sob T^T
For me… It would be ANY snake mutation…. Mother f@#$&+, i respect them as a species and their role in the food chain, and the sheer’ness of snakedom.. however, within ANY PROXIMITY to be, and my lizard brain activates and i scream like a little girl and run away (screaming). Sigh. Irrational fears suck.
The description of the insect from two different perspectives was hilarious! Thank you for bringing to us this delicious novel!