Chapter 180: Chapter 167: Basically in Human Form
Gu Ning stared at him. "Everything?"
Barto didn’t speak. He tore open a roll of gauze with his teeth and began to bandage her wound.
Gu Ning continued to stare at him.
"You took off my clothes," she said bluntly.
Her command of the Beastman language wasn’t fluent, so she couldn’t exactly beat around the bush.
"I didn’t," Barto said, looking away.
Seeing that he wouldn’t admit it, Gu Ning suddenly stopped and didn’t press the matter.
An inexplicable silence fell between them. Gu Ning belatedly realized that the person before her was no longer just a fox. Although he still had many bestial features, he was basically in human form.
To break the slightly awkward atmosphere, Gu Ning took the topical ointment Barto had used on her and squeezed some out to apply to the wound on Cook’s face.
"Cook, lower your head."
Cook brought his head closer, but before Gu Ning could apply the ointment to his face, he stuck out his tongue and licked her fingers, cleaning off all the ointment.
Gu Ning patted his head. "...Silly Cook, it’s not food."
Cook let out a whine. AWOO.
Just as Gu Ning was about to squeeze out more ointment, Barto snatched it away. "His wound has already scabbed over. What’s the point of putting medicine on it?"
"Oh," Gu Ning said.
As Barto packed up the first-aid kit, he said softly, "I did take them off."
"Oh... Huh?" said Gu Ning.
"I didn’t look or touch anywhere I shouldn’t have," Barto mumbled. "Just... a little."
Gu Ning didn’t say anything. ’What am I supposed to say? I can’t just tell him it’s okay, can I?’
If this were before, she wouldn’t have cared so much. Barto was just a fox, a fox that was only a little more than half her height.
But now...
Gu Ning sized him up. The current Barto was tall and slender, with a handsome face that clearly showed his every emotion.
Barto kept his head down, not noticing Gu Ning’s scrutinizing gaze. His voice was a bit muffled. "I didn’t do it on purpose."
"...I know. It’s fine," Gu Ning said.
Barto’s voice grew even quieter. "I just wanted to check your wounds."
Gu Ning sighed. "It’s okay..."
’Can we please change the subject already?’
"How can it be okay!?" Barto’s head snapped up, his expression turning serious. "Does that mean it’s fine if someone else does that to you?"
Gu Ning was exasperated. ’Well, what do you want me to do about it?’
If the little fox hadn’t said anything, she wouldn’t have even known he’d done it.
She knew his style. When they used to live together, he would often just pry the door open and come right in, but back then, she was more worried about him discovering her identity.
Compared to Cook, he was even more like a small animal.
Now that the little fox had become human, he seemed to care about these things even more than she did.
If he had just admitted it openly, she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. It was his evasiveness that was making her feel more and more awkward.
She glanced at Cook, who was still holding her fingers and licking them, then shrugged at Barto. It was her way of saying she was used to it and that he shouldn’t worry, giving him an out.
Barto grabbed her hand back and smacked Cook hard on the head. "Stupid dog, get lost."
Cook tilted his head, looking at him in confusion. "Woof?"
Things were fine, so why was Barto angry again?
Cook lay down beside Gu Ning and sighed.
Barto and Gu Ning faced each other in silence. After a long moment, a message popping up on Barto’s terminal broke the quiet. He straightened up, his expression serious. "I need to go out. I have something to take care of."
Hearing he had business, Gu Ning grew nervous. "What is it?"
Barto grabbed some clothes and threw them on, then knelt in front of Gu Ning. "I’ll be back before dark."
Seeing the nervous worry on her face, he reached out and gently brushed her cheek with his finger. "It’s about the three of us leaving Zone 19. Nothing will go wrong this time. Alex’s men are right outside. If you need anything, just find them."
"Alright." Gu Ning tapped her terminal and made a calling gesture. "Stay in contact. Voice call, not messages."
Barto heard this and immediately recalled the time that leopard had used him to lure Gu Ning out. "Okay," he said.
After he left, Gu Ning sat in a daze for a moment before wrapping the blanket around herself and walking to the window. A short while later, she saw Barto’s red figure exiting the building.
But to her surprise, Barto had changed back into his fox form.
She watched the little fox’s tiny figure disappear around the corner, her gaze then falling upon the Beastman soldiers stationed around the building.
After the Military Department moved into Zone 19, Beastman soldiers had been posted around the construction site. This was especially true while they were capturing Mutant Species, when patrol numbers in the area had increased. Gu Ning wasn’t surprised by this.
But today, she sensed something was different.
The number of Beastman soldiers standing guard and patrolling downstairs had more than doubled. ’Haven’t they already cleared out most of the Mutant Species?’
Gu Ning, half-hidden by the window, watched the Beastman soldiers in thought for a while before returning to the living room and turning on her terminal.
The network was still a bit unstable, but she could get online.
Gu Ning swiped her finger across the terminal’s screen and tapped on the paw print icon, logging into the PressPaw account she hadn’t used in a long time.
On the screen, a cute animal paw repeatedly opened and closed, indicating it was logging in. This time, it didn’t keep her waiting long. After about ten seconds, she was successfully logged in.
The familiar PressPaw homepage popped up.
She hadn’t been on for nearly half a month, and the homepage layout was already different from the last time she’d logged in. The recommended videos on the main page had probably been rotated several times, and the page background had changed from autumn leaves to falling winter snow, with many new snow-themed videos.
It was just the beginning of winter. To match the season, PressPaw’s background always changed with the four seasons.
As recommended videos scrolled on the homepage, Gu Ning immediately spotted her own videos in a recommendation block on the sidebar.
This block recommended the top ten most-viewed videos of the past month. All of the short videos she had posted before were on it. Her videos took up half of the ten recommendation slots.
Although the block wasn’t especially prominent, its position on the homepage could still bring in a lot of traffic.
Unfortunately, Gu Ning’s account couldn’t be upgraded, so she could no longer earn money from donations.
Gu Ning winced internally at the lost income and casually clicked on one of her videos.
The comment section was as lively as ever and hadn’t quieted down due to her disappearance. In fact, the number of comments had multiplied several times over.
The top comments were either urging her to post a new video or guessing where she’d gone after being offline for so long. Of course, there was no shortage of flame comments either.
[Why hasn’t Gu Demiao Ning been online for so long?]
[It’s been ages since you posted a new video. You never used to go this many days between posts.]
[Did you go into hibernation?]
[Does anyone even hibernate anymore? Even the Snake Clan rarely hibernates these days.]
[Rare doesn’t mean never. My neighbor still follows his primitive hibernation instincts. As soon as winter hit, he ran off to the mountains to dig a hole and hibernate.]
[I don’t want to hibernate either, but my hibernation genes are acting up. I get deathly tired as soon as winter arrives, but I still have to be at work by 8 AM every morning and get a bunch of crap dumped on me by my dog of a boss. Looking at Yuanbao is the only thing that makes me feel a little alive again (crying emoji)]
[OP, that’s rough. I’ll help you curse your dog of a boss. May he get a flat tire on his way out, have to walk to work, step in dog crap on the way, and then fall face-first into it.]
[Watch your damn mouth, poster above me. We Dog Clan don’t crap on the street. You want me to crap in your mouth instead?]
[Disgusting. I get annoyed just seeing you Dog Clan types.]
Gu Ning couldn’t help but chuckle at these comments. Her mood lightened a bit, and she continued scrolling down:
[Maybe it’s not hibernation. They probably just abandoned the account since they can’t upgrade it.]
[I get that feeling too. To get a Level 5 account, you need to have two hours of total video time. All of Yuanbao’s videos combined aren’t even two minutes long...]
[Nooo! Gu Demiao Ning, I won’t let you give up on our Yuanbao like this!]
[Gu Demiao, just throw together any old videos, I don’t care. For Yuanbao’s sake, I’ll even let you pad out the runtime with filler!]
