Plin Ch 2.18

“Hnngh… Executive Director… haa.”

The fox’s tail wagged. His tongue playfully swept up Plin’s columella and then even tickled his nostrils. The cartilage that touched his tongue, as if it would crumble if he bit down on it, was supple.

The bleeding stopped sooner than expected, perhaps due to the shock. Knowing that the bleeding had stopped, he was still licking around his nostrils. He wanted to put it in the hole if he could, and if he could only partially transform his tongue, he could lick both nostrils at the same time, but he ended up just licking the surrounding area, thinking that the fragile fox might faint from shock.

When Hugo, who had been engrossed in licking Plin’s nosebleed, raised his head, Plin was sniffling.

“Why. Are you scared?”

“Hiiing…”

Eventually, Plin burst into tears, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I was just trying to stop the bleeding.”

“Uwaaaa—.”

Hugo, who had been frantically consuming the elixir, was bewildered and protested that he had only been trying to help. It was counterproductive, as Plin started to cry out loud.

“Why are you crying? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay?”

Hugo patted Plin’s thigh and spoke to him. He wondered if this was something to cry about.

“Okay. I’ll ask for permission before I lick you next time.”

All of a sudden, Plin hugged his neck.

‘Devoted love’. It had a meaning that was only applicable to canids, but licking a partner’s wounds had that meaning. Even though there was no special efficacy in the saliva of their own kind, canids would often stop bleeding quickly when they were carefully licked. It was a psychological factor engraved in their genes.

“Hnngh… I’m sorry. For crying… When I was a little cub, I remembered when my mom licked me…”

He remembers when he was still a young child, when his fur was somewhere between beige and white. When his relatives made comments about his light fur color when he was young, his parents would fight back, pointing fingers, and they would shampoo Plin’s fur with brown hair shampoo every morning and evening.

When the executive director licked his blood, he was reminded of that affectionate time like a flash. Don’t be sick, let’s get better soon, the anxious affection that he could feel even without words.

When he grew older and whiter and was identified as an ‘ominous’ white fox and expelled from the clan, his parents, who would have protected him, had already passed away in a car accident. Even that blame was placed on Plin, who was still young.

Therefore, in Plin’s life, the memory of the affection of licking each other existed only in a fleeting moment.

Hugo was surprised, first by the grip of the body hugging him tightly, and second by the fact that the fox liked being licked. He felt like things would go smoothly in the future. He patted Plin’s back while being hugged.

“My darling. You know that talk we were having earlier.”

“I still don’t know what’s going on… hnngh, but I was going to say let’s just do it…”

Plin sniffled and shared his thoughts. As soon as he felt the danger of Ethan, he lost his mind in fear and might have made a foolish choice. But he didn’t know if he would come to a conclusion even if he thought about it more.

This one time, he just wanted to choose what he wanted to do, not the choice that was left after eliminating the choices that he had to avoid. He might regret it after doing it. But he wanted to bear the cost of that regret.

“Okay, good.”

“Please make sure to find Andrea.”

Hugo, still comforting Plin, who continued to cry like a child, suddenly said.

“I’ll show you a world you’ve never experienced before.”

He was surprised to realize that he was quite sincere when he said it himself. He never thought he would be serious about seducing a mere commoner fox… He thought he was losing his mind in the face of the painkiller.

He had to feed him something. Hugo wiped the tears from the corners of the crying fox’s eyes with his index finger, licked the tears from his finger, and then got up.

“You’ve lost blood, so you need to eat some meat. Do you have any meat?”

“Yes… sniff, I bought some. It’s in that bag.”

“Alright.”

While Plin was lost in old memories and shedding tears without a care, Hugo took out some sausages from the bag. They were individually wrapped in polyethylene, so their shape was clearly visible. Hugo picked up a sausage as if he had never seen one before and turned it over in his hands.

“What’s this?”

“Sausage.”

“This? Why is it such a pretty pink color? It’s strange.”

There was no meat with such a vivid pink color. He was sure they had added food coloring, and he wondered if this kind of thing stimulated one’s appetite.

“What is it?”

Plin asked in a sullen voice. If he was going to nitpick about commoner food like that, he shouldn’t have bothered, he felt a surge of resentment.

“The color, the shape, the size. It’s exactly like your c*ck, chuckle chuckle.”

Hugo laughed with a strange sound.

“What are you talking about!”

“But Plin, why isn’t your stamina strong?”

“Don’t say strange things. I’ll cook it.”

“No, sit down. How many do you want to eat?”

“Two.”

Plin answered quite casually. He felt strangely at ease. His tears had already dried up, and his eyes were dry.

“…Are you anorexic?”

“What?”

“If it were me, I’d need to eat twenty of these to feel full.”

“Gasp, really? Executive Director… did you have dinner?”

Plin looked back at him anxiously and asked. If he ate twenty sausages, what would he do? That was the expression on his face. Plin ate two at a time, but it wasn’t a food he ate every day, so 20 was enough to last him a month.

“No. Ah! I’m starving. I always wanted to try commoner’s food. In dramas, the food that commoners eat always looks so delicious. This looks delicious too.”

He licked his lips, transforming into a snake with a sly expression.

“Don’t joke around.”

“What if I’m not joking?”

Hugo smiled innocently and poured the contents of the bag onto the table from top to bottom.

“I have to eat it all before I leave.”

He hoped that only sausages would come out, but thud, a black plastic object, about two finger segments long, fell at his feet. Hugo glanced down at it.

He tilted his head to one side, as a fox does, and picked it up. Unlike the pink sausage, it was a familiar object that didn’t need to be examined. It was a small recording device of the model that Ethan often used. It looked like the familiar beetle.

“This… I’ve seen this often?”

Hugo shook the recording device in front of his eyes and looked at Plin, demanding an answer. He wasn’t glaring, and Plin trembled at his expressionless face. The house was particularly silent today, and the silence without conversation seemed to settle even more heavily. His head was blank, and he couldn’t even think of an excuse for its purpose.

Plin started by apologizing.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“That’s too much, Plin.”

He looked at Plin with clear eyes. The playful atmosphere from just a moment ago felt like a mirage. Plin hung his head low. He felt a stinging sensation at the crown of his head from the shame. This was how it was going to be. In the end, he was going to hurt the person who said he liked him…

An uncomfortable silence followed. It felt like time was violating the laws of physics and flowing slowly.

Funnily enough, he was also resentful. He hadn’t done anything bad to Hugo yet, but he was worried that he might be pushed around. All sorts of emotions swirled, but he couldn’t move, like a butterfly pinned as a specimen.

The first thing he heard was his sigh.

“Haa… It’s only been a few hours since we talked about dating, and you’re already this obsessed with me.”

“…..”

“Do all foxes do this when they’re dating?”

“…Yes?”

Plin looked at Hugo with reddened eyes.

“It’s a culture shock.”

Hugo said, tapping the recording device.

“You’re going to check my text messages, tell me to get permission every time I meet someone, break up with me if I don’t contact you for an hour, and put a recording device on me?”

“No… that’s not it.”

“I understand your desire to control me, but this is too much restraint.”

He smiled refreshingly as he spoke. Plin was still frozen.

“…..”

“It’s okay. I like possessiveness too. It’s just, this is too much.”

Hugo added jokingly.

“…Yes.”

Hugo checked that the recording device was still off and put it in his pocket. Everything has its timing. He had just started with the fox, and he had no intention of ruining the mood by asking about Ethan now.

From the moment he was born and became aware of Ethan’s existence, he had judged him to be a small fry, but now he felt that he was becoming quite a nuisance.

***