A Guide to Raising your Natural Enemy

chapter 6

6. The Kind Person is a Snake

After receiving a pile of firewood the next day, Shu Shu inhaled the familiar smell on the firewood. He happily send off some delicious roasted stem tubers in return. Afterwards, he took some of his strong braided grass ropes and went out to collect soft hays.

These days, Shu Shu had dug three more small holes in the big cave where he lived. Two of them were used to store food, and the other one was for him to live in.

The hole he had chosen to live in was not big; he had to crawl to get inside, but he liked it this way.

After he had done with the dig, Shu Shu had used fire to bake that one hole for several days. Now he's pondering whether he should fill the entire cave with hays, so that in the winter he could squeeze into the hays-it certainly would be very nice and warm.

Shu Shu walked here and there to collect weeds, and he soon collected quite a lot of them in just a short while. Most of these grasses were not dry, but so long as he put them out in the sun for two days, they would be dry.

It's a pity that he did not find any cotton tree nearby. If his cave had been stuffed full of cotton, then it would surely have been very, very comfortable.

Thinking this way, Shu Shu once again yearned for human society. He remembered that cotton was very cheap for humans. At that time, his owner had cleaned up his cage every few days, and each time, his owner would replace the cotton in his small nest with clean, new one.

If only he had a big pile of cotton now!

Looking at the verdant and lush forest surrounding him, Shu Shu sighed and resignedly continued to collect weeds.

This kind of weed was abundant in the forest. Shu Shu soon collected enough weeds and then tied them up together with some grass ropes. Carrying the bundle on his back, he walked back home.

He could put many, many things in his food pouches, but to put things into his food pouches, he had to first stuff them into his mouth. Things like chestnuts, he was willing to stuff his mouth with them, but dirt-smeared stem tubers, weeds, and so on... just forget about it, OK?

"I'm a little..., no, a young boy, carrying a schoolbag on my back and going to school, not afraid of the shining sun and not afraid of the raging wind and rain, afraid of the teacher scolding me for being lazy, if I don't learn then I will have no face to see my parents...." Shu Shu hummed a song quietly while walking home.

When he had not turned into a human yet, he had not been able to speak and also had not dared to speak. He could finally speak now, and yet the only person around was himself.... In that case, he could only keep babbling to himself.

Shu Shu had become accustomed to walking in the forest. He walked very fast, just walking and walking, when suddenly all the hair on his ears and body stood up. There was a tingling sensation on his scalp.

He was no stranger at all to this sort of situation. Formerly, he had just been a small hamster. He had even lived in the wild for quite some time, and he had often felt like this. This meant that a predator was staring at him.

Danger! Shu Shu didn't want to run, but he broke into a run right away. He had just taken a step when he felt a burst of strong wind accompanied by a rank odor behind his body.

Shu Shu hurriedly threw away the big bundle of weeds he was carrying on his back and continued to run forward without looking back.

According to his accumulated experience over the past few hundred years, at a moment like this, rather than wasting time to look back, it was better off to keep on running and running a little bit more away.