Chapter 2

I’d taken over the serpent woman’s body, and she had taken over the little patterned snake’s.

When I first arrived, I opened my eyes to find the little snake beside me, looking as though it wanted to bite but couldn’t bring itself to do it.

Before I could scream, my gaze drifted down to my legs. Something felt distinctly wrong with them.

Well, well. What did we have here? A powerful snake tail covered in brilliant colors!

My eyes rolled back. I fainted.

When I woke again, the little snake climbed onto my neck and slapped my face with its tail.

I stared into those snaky eyes. It stared back.

Something strange seemed to burst open inside my head. Somehow, I understood what the little snake was trying to tell me.

The soul inside it belonged to the body I was now occupying.

For some bizarre reason, we could understand each other’s thoughts. It was bewildered. So was I.

Finally, I ventured, “How about we put up with each other for now? Maybe we’ll be able to switch back someday.”

After all, I had no idea how I’d ended up inside a beastfolk novel I’d read.

And if we couldn’t switch back, I had taken someone else’s body for nothing. The least I could do was look after the little snake for the rest of her life and see her properly laid to rest.

The little snake nodded.

Our agreement reached, I began crawling, twisting my body awkwardly.

She turned to look at me with undisguised contempt.

Then she raised her head, swung her tail, and demonstrated how to move on a serpent’s lower body.

Luckily, this body retained some muscle memory. Soon I could slither along, swaying my tail.

Quite gracefully, too.

Once she’d finished teaching me, though, the little snake crawled into a corner and curled helplessly around herself, thoroughly depressed.

Perhaps being in a serpent woman’s body was affecting me, because snakes no longer seemed particularly frightening.

I scooped up the miserable little creature, wound her around my wrist, and slithered outside.

“Come on! Show me around,” I said, as if we’d known each other forever.

The little snake had nothing to say to that.

Three months passed in a flash, and the heroine arrived right on schedule.

She caused quite a stir. The little snake rushed out at once.

She came back utterly dejected.

When she heard the tiger man she liked arrive at our cave to offer compensation, she was furious enough to want to sink her teeth into him.

Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to tie her in a knot and toss her into the corner first.

After cheerfully settling the whole business, I came back to untie her. That was how the scene above had come about.

“You’re a serpent woman. Surely you ought to fall for a dozen men or so to live up to the name?” I looked at her in scorn.

“But no, you have to fixate on that one tiger man. Who is he, exactly? What makes him worth all this misery?”

“Instead of wasting time being sad, why not get stronger? Then you can have those males groveling at your tail for one little glance. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Quite apart from the fact that the tiger man’s heart wasn’t hers, she didn’t stand a chance against the heroine’s plot armor.

All she’d get for her trouble was humiliation. Better to cut her losses.

If I hadn’t felt guilty about occupying her body, I wouldn’t have bothered saying any of this.

The little snake stared blankly, then quietly climbed onto my hand and wound herself around it.

She didn’t quite follow, but I sounded so certain that I had to have a point.

Now that she’d stopped acting as if her life was over, I left her curled around my arm and began dealing with the food.

Meat didn’t keep well. Winter was over, and although it was still a little cold, the weather had begun to warm up.

I’d have to smoke it to make it last longer.