Chapter 1

I stood in front of the mirror.

After a moment’s hesitation, I patted my cheeks.

Ow… That hurt a little.

So those floating comments I’d just seen hadn’t been a hallucination?

I studied my reflection.

The weather was hot, and all I had on was a thin silk slip.

There was nothing unusual about the smooth pale skin between its two slender straps, or about my bare arms and legs.

Then I remembered the strange sensations I’d woken up to over the past few days…

Facing the mirror, I slipped off my nightdress.

The skin that had been hidden beneath it was covered in red marks, some dark, some faint.

The comments said they weren’t hives. They were impressions left by snake scales…

What kind of snake had scales that big?

This was too fantastical to be real.

I shook my head and left the bathroom, still only half convinced.

The little snake waiting outside immediately wound itself around my ankle as usual. It slithered upward, slipped through my neckline, and settled around my neck, flicking out its long tongue to lick my collarbone. It tickled.

At that moment, the comments appeared again:

[A limited-edition Bulgari necklace. Only one in the world.]

[Official diagnosis: Zhou Ci has terminal skin hunger. He pretends to be a pet snake so he can coil around the heroine and rub against her all day. Every scheme he’s accumulated over thousands of years is being used on her.]

[Give the guy a break. If he didn’t pretend to be a pet, he wouldn’t even get to touch her hand.]

[Why is the heroine blushing?]

[Fam, how much longer until we get the scene where she’s bound tight in that snake tail for seven days and nights, eyes completely unfocused?]

[No idea. This was supposed to be a groveling-ex story. The original never mentioned anything like that.]

[If this story doesn’t get spicy, what’s even the point?]

[Am I remembering wrong? I thought the original only had Zhou Yanxu. There was no Zhou Ci…]

Zhou. Ci.

The moment those two syllables surfaced in my mind, an uncontrollable shudder ran through me.

The patch of skin he’d licked burned hotter and hotter too.

I tilted my head to look at the little snake around my neck.

It was slender and pure white, like a piece of mutton-fat jade that had rested in a museum for a thousand years.

Three vivid red dots marked its forehead.

A week ago, it had been Zhou Yanxu’s birthday.

I’d lied to my family, saying I needed to return to school early to revise my graduation thesis.

Then I’d flown back from Switzerland ahead of schedule.

Hidden inside a human-sized mascot costume, I’d planned to surprise him.

Just as I crept up to the private room, I heard one of Zhou Yanxu’s friends ask, “So? What’s that little princess from the Ying family like in bed?”

Zhou Yanxu chuckled. “Haven’t tried her yet.”

“What, did you actually fall for her? You’re not going to film it and ‘accidentally’ post the video online to humiliate the Ying family anymore? Honestly, Ying Xu is unbelievably stupid. You’re her brother’s sworn enemy, and she still agreed to date you behind her family’s back.”

“We agreed we’d do it when she got back from vacation. It’ll be on her birthday too—the perfect surprise for the Ying family.”

…

I stood outside the door.

The mascot suit was thick, heavy, and stifling.

I should have been boiling inside it.

Instead, it felt as though someone had drenched me in ice water from head to toe. I was cold to the bone.

And so, on the day I broke up with him,

I took revenge on Zhou Yanxu by stealing his family’s most treasured pet snake.

I played with it every day.

It became wonderfully tame and obedient.

By day, it looped around my wrist and flicked its tongue over my fingertips.

At night, I used it as a natural air conditioner, tucked it against my chest, and slept with it.

Now that I thought about it…

those marks had always appeared after I woke up…

If the comments were telling the truth…

I considered the situation calmly for five seconds.

Then I ordered the most expensive temperature-controlled reptile enclosure I could find at lightning speed.