#17

“Let’s see. Judging by how you’re doing now, I’d say you’ll need to stick by my side for at least ten years.”

In that moment, his voice echoed in my head. Ten years. That word sank into my chest like a lump of lead. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Ten years… with this guy? Living with this constant tension every day? With this psycho? Just the thought made my head spin.

“…You’re joking, right?”

My voice trembled.

“Does it sound like I’m joking?”

Wei Chen’s voice dropped lower. His eyes still held that mischievous glint, but somehow, I could sense something unnerving behind it—something terrifyingly real.

My heart started racing. The air suddenly felt heavy. I could feel his gaze settle on my shoulder. It looked like he was about to say something, but at that moment, a sharp pain shot through my shoulder.

“Ah…!”

I instinctively clutched at it and stumbled back. But when I looked down at my shoulder, it was no longer the body I recognized. Huge, pitch-black feathers were sprouting from my shoulder blade.

“You…”

Wei Chen’s voice sank into a low growl as he stepped toward me. I couldn’t even breathe as I backed away. His eyes swept over the edge of my wing.

The house was in literal ruins.

Everything was shattered, not a single intact spot left—it was a complete wreck. I regained consciousness in the middle of the chaos, cradled in Wei Chen’s arms.

When I looked up, Wei Chen was casually licking blood from the corner of his mouth, smiling with ease. He held me like it was nothing and walked through the wreckage on his long legs, heading up to the second floor. Unlike the disaster below, my bedroom was relatively untouched. He carefully laid me down and left the room without a word.

Despite all the extreme experiments, the mutation had always failed—yet just from Wei Chen saying, “You might have to live with me for ten years,” it had finally triggered. It was absurd, terrifying… but somehow, the exhaustion dulled all thought.

I forced myself to lie down, trying to push away the chaotic scenes that threatened to flood my mind the moment I closed my eyes. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but in the end, fatigue pressed down heavier than any stray thought.

The next day.

When I came home from school, the house that had been a mess just that morning was now spotless. Wei Chen tossed my bag onto the sofa with a thud and led me straight into the lab.

“Do you remember what it felt like when you mutated?”

I nodded. The vague sensations I’d felt during the two previous mutations were now sharp and clear in my mind.

“Thinking about living with you for ten years…”

Wei Chen watched me seriously as I spoke.

“…It felt awful.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not kidding—when it hit me that I might actually have to live with you, I felt my insides boil and everything turned red. I hated it so much, I even thought it might be better to just kill you!”

I spoke heatedly, and Wei Chen nodded thoughtfully. After a moment of silence, he opened his mouth.

“Actually… there’s a side effect I haven’t told you about yet.”

His voice sank low.

“If you keep getting injections of my blood, your body might end up becoming more deeply connected to mine. In the worst-case scenario… there’s a chance you could get pregnant with my child.”

The moment those words left his mouth, my heart dropped like a stone. And then, with a violent rip, two-meter-long black wings burst through the back of my clothes.

* * *

Wei Chen’s talk about side effects was, of course, a lie.

The lab was still steeped in cold air and silence. After the mutation ended, I stood next to Wei Chen, clenching and unclenching my sweat-drenched hands. The monitor flickered faintly, and Wei Chen stared at it in silence.

“Look, this is the data from when you mutated.”

Wei Chen pointed at the screen, speaking in a low voice.

The monitor displayed detailed records of the exact moment I mutated. My heart rate spiked far beyond normal range, and the graph showing neural activity looked like it had gone berserk. My brainwaves showed intense oscillations, signaling overload and chaos.

“The critical point hit when your fear and anxiety peaked.”

Wei Chen pointed at a specific data set on the monitor.

In that moment, the hormone levels in my body skyrocketed several times beyond normal. Adrenaline, cortisol, and some strange compounds I’d never seen before were recorded at abnormal levels.

“Your body didn’t just react to emotion. These unique enzymes—the nectar started activating in your system only after you hit that emotional threshold. That’s what triggered the cellular changes.”

I stared hard at the data on the monitor. It clearly showed the spread of bizarre chemical reactions through my bloodstream and how my muscles and nerves began to change.

“So, your mutation isn’t just instinct. The emotions you feel directly act as the catalyst.”

Wei Chen’s words lingered. I could hear the heavy gulp of my own saliva as I stared at the screen again. The numbers, the graphs, and all the lab records laid bare just how much my emotions were steering my body.

It became clear: mastering my emotions was the only way to control the mutation.

And the one who played the biggest role in stirring those emotions was none other than Wei Chen.

Just thinking about a future spent with him made my levels spike into the danger zone.

Since I couldn’t destroy Wei Chen’s house every day, mutations had to be done strictly inside the lab. Even though I figured out how to trigger my transformation into a crow, turning back into a human still required Wei Chen’s blood.

So he always had to deal with me in monster form. When I’d come to, Wei Chen would be drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. Sometimes, he’d have torn-up wounds, but hey, what mattered was that he was still alive.

The roles had reversed—I wasn’t the only one getting wrecked from mutation anymore.

On the other hand, I was growing used to the strange, unsettling sensation of transforming. Like how a path leaves a mark when you walk it repeatedly, doing it daily under the same conditions sharpened my sense of the process. I couldn’t explain it in words—more like a feeling, the way you can whistle a tune but not describe how.

Today, I was fully prepared to mutate again, but instead of the lab, Wei Chen had me sit on the sofa. I looked at him suspiciously, only for him to suddenly pull me into his arms.

“Ugh, what are you doing?!”

“Smell it.”

“What?!”

“My scent.”

What kind of weird crap was this? I straightened my flailing arms and took a deep breath. His body scent, mixed with that familiar cologne, filled my nose.

“Keep breathing it in.”

Wei Chen gripped my waist tighter and then just sat me down on his thigh. Wasn’t this position kind of… indecent? I tried to move next to him, but his arms locked me in place.

“I said, smell it.”

“Can you at least tell me why?”

“So you can stay sane after you mutate. Practice.”

“…What does clinging to me and sniffing you have to do with that?”

“I’m imprinting a trigger that’ll bring you back. Wherever you mutate, if you catch my scent, you’ll come find me. Bonus.”

I shot him a skeptical look.

“Is this really gonna help?”

“Won’t know till we try.”

And so began the training to imprint his scent. I did it because I was told to, but with time, I couldn’t help but feel like I was becoming his pet or something.

“Come here.”

Blindfolded with his tie, I wandered around the lab. The whole exercise was to find him by smell alone. Sniffing like a bloodhound, I was hit by a sudden wave of reality and just froze. His voice echoed through the speakers.

“Hey. No distractions. Focus.”