Mu Mushu (BL) · chat.title

You've felt that something hasn't been quite right at home lately. You can't pinpoint exactly when it started. Maybe after that trip to the aquarium? You aren't sure. Just small, trivial things—magazines on the sofa flipped to pages you didn't read; occasional small puddles of water on the edge of the coffee table, no bigger than a palm, which you assumed you spilled and forgot; a feeling of being watched in the dark when you turned over at night, but nothing there when you switched on the light. You convinced yourself you were just tired lately. People living alone tend to get paranoid. Later, you bought a home security camera and filmed the living room and hallway for a full week. It was Wednesday. You were at your desk, stuck in meetings for three hours straight, your mind groggy. During a break in compiling code, you took a sip of cold coffee, picked up your phone, and opened the camera app. The moment the image loaded, you almost thought your eyes were playing tricks on you. Someone was in your bedroom. A light-haired youth, wearing that familiar black narrow-shoulder tank top, was kneeling by your bed. He held your quilt in his arms, his face buried deep inside it, his shoulders hunched slightly as if he were holding something incredibly precious. His tentacles—yes, blue, translucent tentacles—extended limply from his sides, splayed on the floor behind him, occasionally swaying gently in an unconscious, relaxed manner. He even rolled over, bunched the quilt into a ball, and lay on his side, nuzzling his face against it. Your coffee cup froze in mid-air. That was the quilt you used last night. You were in such a rush this morning that you didn't make the bed. Staring at the boy on the screen frantically sniffing your quilt, your fingers tightened around the cup unconsciously. In the monitor, he changed positions, pulling the quilt up to the collar area, his nose pressed against the fabric, and went still again, as if he had fallen asleep or was simply savoring the state. You stood up. The chair slid back and hit the table leg with a dull thud. A colleague nearby looked up at you; you waved them off, saying it was nothing, and grabbed your phone to head out of the conference room. At the door, you looked at the monitor again—he hadn't noticed yet, his tentacles still swaying lazily. You cursed under your breath, shoved the phone into your pocket, and pushed through the door. The elevator was too slow. You couldn't wait, so you turned and dashed into the stairwell. Your head buzzed as you ran down—Who? How did he get in? When? In your quilt, your bed, your home, someone from nowhere was holding your quilt and sniffing it. You took a deep breath as you inserted the key into the lock. You told yourself to stay calm; there might be danger inside. You didn't know who he was, if he had weapons, if—the door opened. You threw open the bedroom door. He heard you. The youth jerked his head up from the quilt, his pale gold hair messy and sticking up, a bit of sleep-dampness still at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were icy blue, wide with terror. You made eye contact for about 0.3 seconds. Then he exploded. Not a metaphor—he literally went off. Tentacles snapped out from behind him, frantically knotting in the air, tangling over and over. His ear tips visibly burned from pale pink to deep red, the flush spreading to his lobes, his neck, and the small patch of collarbone visible above his tank top. He opened his mouth, letting out a breathy "You—" and then got stuck. "It's not—" he finally squeezed out a full syllable. His voice was a clear, soft tone, but now it shook uncontrollably, like a stone hitting the water's surface. "It's not, it's not what you think—" His tentacles tied themselves into a dead knot behind him as he began to back away, his back hitting the nightstand with a clatter. He looked down at the quilt still in his arms, then snapped his head up to look at your face, his expression like a nocturnal creature caught in a flashlight's beam. "I didn't—" He pushed the quilt away, then yanked it back, seemingly unsure whether to throw it aside or keep holding it. Finally, he chose to bunch it against his chest, curling into a ball as his voice crumbled into fragments. "This, this is just... I don't know... I wasn't sniffing..." You took a step forward, and he shrank back, tentacles knotting frantically behind him. "...Don't look." He buried his face in the quilt, his voice muffled as it squeezed through the fabric. "Don't look. Turn around." His ear tips were so red they were almost transparent. His tentacles were twisted into a pretzel behind him as he curled on the floor by the bed, clutching the quilt you slept in last night tightly to his chest, hiding his face completely, revealing only a pair of glowing red ears.