Chapter 4

Chapter 4

While I was on the phone with the headhunter, I didn’t notice that the snake had left the coat rack. It wasn’t until I hung up and felt a chill on the back of my neck that I realized its tail had wrapped around my throat.

?

“Pearl?”

The snake was coiled around my neck, staring straight at my computer screen. On it was the document I’d prepared for tomorrow’s interview.

The headhunter had contacted me before. Today’s call was just to confirm the interview time and a few details.

Having an interview on the weekend was honestly pretty soul-crushing, but it really was hard to make time on a workday.

So I could only let both myself and the other company’s HR suffer a little.

A soft hiss sounded by my ear.

I casually stroked its head. “Baby, once Daddy works hard, jumps ship, and gets a raise, I won’t have to put up with that idiot boss anymore. Then I’ll take you to live in a better place.”

The moment I finished saying that, who knew what got into it, but it slithered away.

A black kingsnake was black from head to tail, so when it wanted to hide, it was hard for me to find it. But Pearl was pretty well-behaved. Even if it crawled off, it stayed somewhere I could see.

Before bed, I checked the doors and windows around the apartment. After making sure there weren’t any gaps the snake could escape through, I turned back to look at the snake that was very much resisting going into its reptile enclosure and sighed softly. “If you don’t want to stay in there, then stay outside.”

Once it saw that I wasn’t going to stuff it back into the enclosure, Pearl very naturally climbed onto my bed.

I let out a quiet laugh. “What kind of snake insists on sleeping in a bed?”

It ignored me.

After turning off the lights, I felt around in the dark for the snake beside me. The cool sensation was still there. When I found its head, I leaned over and gave it a kiss.

“Good night.”

I’d been living alone ever since graduating from college. After so long on my own, it was rare to have another living creature in the apartment besides me, so it was perfectly normal for me to be a little enthusiastic.

After the kiss, I really did lie down. I had an interview tomorrow, so I needed to get a good rest.

And my sleep quality had always been good. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I quickly lost consciousness. Naturally, I had no idea that the black snake beside me went stiff for quite a while after being kissed.

Nor did I know that in the middle of the night, the other side of the bed sank slightly, and another man’s body appeared out of thin air. Still half-conscious, he instinctively moved toward the source of warmth on the bed.

I slept deeply, but unexpectedly, I had what could only be described as a bizarre dream.

It felt a little like sleep paralysis, but my mind was muddled, and I couldn’t wake up.

Only in the dream, there was an intimate, sensual edge to it.

As if someone was touching me. Or rubbing against me.

Even more bizarrely, it was a man.

When I opened my eyes and woke up, I was the only one on the bed, which only proved that it had been nothing more than a suggestive dream.

Well, not entirely. I lowered my head and looked at the snake coiled on top of me. Somehow, during the night, it had crawled inside my clothes, leaving several red marks across my chest, waist, and stomach from the way it had wrapped around me.

“…”

I pulled the culprit out from under my shirt and held it in my hands, meeting its seemingly just-woken-up, slightly dazed gaze.

“Look at what you did.” Even though I didn’t expect a snake to understand me, I still lifted my shirt to show it.

Pearl flicked its tongue, then coiled up as if avoiding the sight, its head no longer facing me.

?

I tugged lightly at its tail, a little baffled. “Do you like me or not? On one hand, you won’t let me touch you and you bite me. On the other, when you sleep, you have to sleep on my chest.”

After thinking for a few seconds, I continued condemning it. “You left your owner covered in marks like this. If I go out and people see, who knows what kind of wild private life they’ll think I have.”

The snake played dead.

As if it understood my scolding.