Chapter 19: 17

Chapter 17

He Is a Shepherd

Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil

 

The boy appears to have trouble both pronouncing words and adjusting tones. The lateral ‘l’ turned into the simple approximant ‘ɹ’ while his tone rose unnaturally in the end, like it’s a question.

And transforming actually hurts; the process of replacing the entire bone and organ structure of the body is highly traumatic. It’s not unbearable, and is possible to get used to, but it is uncomfortable to say the least.

Bai Yao looks down at the three shells and two pebbles in his hand, and at the boy lying down like he’s lying in state, and he almost jolts.

He isn’t trying to bequeath him his belongings thinking he’s going to die, is he?!

Still, he knows this cannot be the first time he’s transformed. He knew where and what faucets do, and knows he should not break shells open with chair legs and the floor.

The boy must have lived as a human in the past.

And now that the fur has retracted, the many scars become visible to the naked eye. Some look old, and some look only recently healed. The worst wound seems to be a circle scar about his right shoulder, that looks bitten, leaving behind two deep pink marks.

It is while looking up and down him that Bai Yao realises he’s completely naked, and so quickly pulls his own blanket down from the bed to cover him, clearing his throat in the process.

The boy opens one of his eyes a little, looking confusedly at Bai Yao and the blanket on his body.

He… might be confused why he’s not dead yet.

The little sea otter is still rather small in frame after transforming into a human. He looks a little thin and short, his ribs and collarbones being rather prominent.

“Don’t worry, you’re alive,” Bai Yao lifts the boy up gradually by the back, so he goes sitting on the carpet. Then he asks, “can you speak?”

The boy watches Bai Yao quietly, shrinking into the blanket a little. He nods slowly, but then shakes his head as well. He doesn’t speak.

Having finally seen him turn, Bai Yao is full of questions for him. Still, the boy needs clothes if he doesn’t want to carry a blanket with him everywhere.

He walks to his wardrobe, and places the shells and pebbles handed to him on the bedside cabinet.

He doesn’t have clothes the boy’s size, because Bai Yao himself is tall and wide. Most clothes are some sizes too big.

Finally, he pulls out a T-shirt he barely ever worn from the bottom of the drawer which has a raven drawn on that is almost fat enough to be a sphere. Qi Ya brought this as a gift for him last time.

The boy receives the T-shirt carefully with his hands, but doesn’t wear it immediately. He smells it hesitantly.

Bai Yao raises his brow, “you know how to wear this?”

“I… yes,” the boy immediately says, and quickly adds, possibly worried Bai Yao will put it on for him, “I… wear.”

The boy’s overall speech is still slow, though, and he has to think before each word, or more to the point, each syllable.

His voice also doesn’t really match his appearance. He looks small, but he’s clearly well past the point of his voice change. He’s a young adult at least, and no adolescent.

The boy seems to think a little, while looking at Bai Yao’s clothes, before finally attempting to put it on the same way.

Then his head ends up doing its best to make it through the sleeve, which fails, of course. He tries to pull it back, but now he’s stuck. The T-shirt wouldn’t come off. Finally, we only have a dumbfounded boy with a piece of clothing stuck on his head in the end.

… Well, considering there are four points of egress on a T-shirt, it might be difficult to choose the right one.

Bai Yao sighs and says, “you can just tell me you don’t know. I won’t laugh,” he frees the boy’s head from the sleeve, finds the collar, and helps him through.

And his clothes really is too big. They look more than loose on the boy, reaching his thighs. Not that he has anything else for him to wear for now.

The raven on the T-shirt makes the whole thing look even funnier, and the boy’s hair is also a mess now. Bai Yao smiles a little, and chuckles.

Bai Yao really can’t get over letting anyone else wear his underpants, though; nor can he allow him to wear nothing down there. In the end, he decides to get the boy a pair of black track pants that would be loose for him, and he rolls up the long bottom.

Bai Yao can’t help but tease, “a little shorty, aren’t we? Still in your growth spurt or no?”

He puts his hand on the boy’s head, who doesn’t react much other than shrinking his head a little in response like a little chicken. He still looks confused, though.

Now he looks passably human, and Bai Yao nods in satisfaction, then he asks, “do you have a name?”

“Yes~” the boy says with a smile at Bai Yao, “… Mu, mu.”

Bai Yao “?”

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“Yang…”

The boy’s pronunciation really needs work. His tongue rolls around his open mouth a few times before the word would come. And honestly, it sounds more like animal onomatopoeia than words.

A confused Bai Yao asks, “what yang?”

“Uh, fang, yang.”

His name is ‘shepherd‘? What in the…

Bai Yao gets out his dictionary on the phone and types ‘mu’ by pinyin. He looks over the possibilities, and thinks the boy’s surname is probably Mu, and he distinctly said two ‘mu’s, so the next one may be his name.

“Which mu?” Bai Yao shows the boy the phone, and rolls down the list slowly, letting the boy check each and every one.

The boy doesn’t react for a long time, and is just staring at the rows and rows of characters on the phone’s screen, trying to find his name unblinkingly.

When Bai Yao is wondering if he actually knows Chinese characters and is about to ask, the boy yells, “ah! This!”

He excitedly squeezes next to Bai Yao, planting his face next to the screen, pointing to one character.

He really looks uncharacteristically childish and simple compared to his age. He’s excited like a kid seeing candy in a Christmas sock.

Bai Yao sees that the character he’s pointing to is the character for trees.

When he wonders if the boy is Mu Mu, the boy adds, “but… there are dots,” he says each word slowly and carefully, “and, and then… Er.”

It’s not so simple to decipher this time. The boy stops moving after saying all that, looking expectantly at Bai Yao, like he believes he’s already explaining very clearly what his name is.

Bai Yao fires his brain up to computer and connect the clues, and finally, he concludes, the boy’s name is Mu Mu'er.

“Mu Mu’er?” Bai Yao tries to call out.

Hearing his own name, the boy is like a cat receiving catnip, elated with pleasant surprise.

“Yes!” He nods and nods, and makes this big, wide grin, “me!”

He’s so excited like no one has called out his name in a long time, or like a child finally getting their parents’ attention. No normal person would react like this to their own name.

Bai Yao furrows his brows a little, and asks gentle, “how old are you?”

The boy starts thinking, tilting his head, and counting up with his fingers.

He starts at thirteen. Thirteen, fourteen fifteen… Every number is a finger flipped to the palm. The fingers on one hand is not enough, and he goes to the next one.

Bai Yao’s brows furrow slightly deeper. He feels like saying something, but doesn’t in the end.

“Nineteen!” The boy says, with his left hand entirely open and his right hand with only the ring finger and pinky curled, “Mu’er, is nineteen!”

After reporting, he looks back at the number ‘shown’ on his hands, and mumbles, disappointed, “I’m, old.”

Seeing him act this way, Bai Yao suddenly gets an idea, an idea which would explain everything the sea otter has been doing so far.

Like covering his eyes when he sees Bai Yao undressed, like piling shells up in a corner at the restaurant, like believing he’d die if he transformed. It’s not just because he’s a sea otter.

The boy’s mental state is nowhere near 20. He behaves like a kid.

The little sea otter isn’t a dummy, but literally intellectually challenged.

After he understands that, and the surprise fades, he feels a little relieved figuring out the truth.

“Is this the first time you transformed?” He asks Mu Mu’er gently, and adds just in case, “meaning turn into human?”

Mu Mu’er thinks, swinging his arms and legs a little, before touching his hair and speaking, “I… I had, these before.”

That would make it not the first time he’s transformed, he just probably hasn’t turned back human in a long time.

After saying that, the boy looks at his T-shirt, then at his back, and then pulls the pants open to look inside. He furrows his brows, like he’s worried or anxious about something. Before Bai Yao can ask, he resolves to start pulling his pants down.

That would be quite inappropriate.

Bai Yao facepalms, “… you have it. I have it, you have it. Pants up.”

He suddenly remembers, though, that he’s felt his little testies. That makes his lips perk up a little.

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