"How can you stand such a strong wolf scent?"

Kloer sniffed at Gu Ning. "Exactly how old are you?"

Forget adult Mixed Breeds; even regular young beasts around ten years old don’t like having another beast’s scent on them. They only use their own scent to mark their belongings and territory.

Kloer smelled Alex’s scent on Gu Ning, and the more he sniffed, the stranger it felt. He got the feeling that Alex had marked Little Gu Ning with his scent.

Gu Ning wanted to push Kloer away, but after discovering she couldn’t move the big bear, she scooted her chair to the side.

Kloer wanted to say more to Gu Ning, but Seth grabbed his arm and dragged him away. "Can you stop bothering the Little Boss? Go do your work." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Kloer threw an arm around Seth’s neck. "You’re coming with me to work too. You just stand guard over your little... over your Little Boss all day, look how happy that makes you."

Seth tried to break free from Kloer’s hold, but he was overpowered by the size difference and couldn’t fight back, so he could only let himself be half-dragged, half-led out.

’Whatever. At least Jite’s here. The priority is getting Kloer out of the way. With him around, the Little Boss can’t even eat her breakfast in peace.’

Seth glanced back at Jite, planning to slip back midway.

SLAM. The door shut, and Gu Ning felt the world go quiet.

She sighed and slumped onto the table, listlessly nibbling on her corn.

"Didn’t sleep well?" Jite’s voice came from above her. Gu Ning hadn’t realized there was someone else in the room and shot up, startled by his voice.

"Didn’t notice I was here?" Jite looked a bit helpless at Gu Ning’s reaction and placed a bowl of peeled, boiled eggs in front of her.

Gu Ning took an egg from the bowl and pushed the rest back to him.

She’d already eaten a lot for breakfast and was almost full.

"You eat them. I’ve already eaten," Jite said.

"Didn’t sleep well last night? Or are you not feeling well?" Seeing that Gu Ning wasn’t in good shape, Jite reached out to touch her forehead, wanting to check her temperature. But with her hood in the way, he couldn’t feel anything, so he could only reach for her hand.

Gu Ning instinctively pulled her hand back.

Jite paused, then stood up and brought over a medical device. He scanned it over her and looked at the results. "36.5°C. Such a low body temperature..."

Gu Ning saw Jite’s scrutinizing gaze and quickly wrote on a piece of paper: My temperature is always like this.

Jite knew this was her normal temperature, but it certainly wasn’t a normal temperature for a Wolf Clan Beastman.

Land Beastmen all had higher body temperatures. Only Sea Clan Beastmen had lower temperatures, and even theirs were lower than Gu Ning’s.

’Could it be because she’s a Mixed Breed with a genetic mutation?’

"Do you have fur on your body?" Jite suddenly asked.

Gu Ning froze in the middle of nibbling her corn. If it weren’t for Jite’s purely inquisitive expression and perfectly normal tone, she would have thought he was being a pervert.

"Your aberration value is quite low," Jite seemed to be muttering to himself. "You maintain your human form very well, and I haven’t seen any signs of bestial transformation. You probably don’t have much fur on your body."

"With no fur for warmth and such a low body temperature, how did you get through the winters before?"

"..." Gu Ning silently got up and returned to her bedroom. She was afraid that if she stayed with Jite any longer, he would ask more questions she couldn’t answer, which might eventually lead him to become suspicious of her identity.

After Gu Ning went into her bedroom, Jite didn’t disturb her. He only knocked on her door in the evening to remind her to eat.

After dinner, Gu Ning holed up in her bedroom again. As usual, she had only seen Seth and Jite all day. She wanted to go online, but the network was too unstable. Web pages took forever to load, and even sending a message took a long time. She gave up on her terminal and instead grabbed a vocabulary book, leaning against the headboard to memorize words.

After studying the words for about an hour, she started to get drowsy.

She slid down in her bed, and just as she snuggled under the covers, her terminal lit up.

It was a message from Alex:

[Are you asleep? I’m not coming back tonight.]

Seeing Alex’s profile picture, Gu Ning couldn’t help but think about last night. Her ears grew hot. She pulled the covers tighter and typed into the chat box:

[Not yet, but I’m getting sleepy. Are you busy with work? You need to get some rest too.]

She sent the message, but after four or five minutes, it still showed as ’sending.’

Gu Ning had no faith in the network. She forced her tired eyes open and went back to memorizing words.

A short while later, the terminal lit up again, its light illuminating Gu Ning’s sleeping face. Alex’s messages popped up on her screen:

[Yeah, I’ll get proper rest. Don’t worry.]

[Do you want me to come back and keep you company?]

...

「The next day, Gu Ning woke up early.」

She stood by the showerhead and tested the water with her hand. It was still ice-cold.

After waiting a few more minutes and testing the temperature several more times, she confirmed there would be no hot water and turned off the valve.

Returning to the sink with an empty washbasin, Gu Ning resigned herself to washing up with cold water.

She squeezed some toothpaste onto her toothbrush and, while brushing her teeth, opened her terminal to see if Barto had messaged her back.

No reply.

Gu Ning saw the red ’X’ next to her message in the chat history and glanced at her terminal’s signal bar.

The network was down.

Now it wasn’t just a power outage; the hot water and internet were cut off too.

The network had been bad for the past few days, constantly cutting in and out, but it had never completely shown ’no network’ like this before.

Gu Ning had long been prepared for power outages and network failures. She turned off her terminal, spit out the foam in her mouth, and rinsed with tap water so cold it made her teeth ache.

"Little Boss."

Seth’s voice came from the other side of the bathroom door. He knocked and asked, "Are you washing up?"

Gu Ning paused, wiped her mouth with a towel, pulled down her hood, and went to open the door.

"You’re done washing up?" Seth smelled the toothpaste on Gu Ning and held up a thermos. "The Boss told me to bring you some hot water."

"Can I come in?" Seth said. "I don’t need the bathroom. Just want to pour the hot water for you."

Gu Ning thought he probably wanted to share the hot water with her, so she stepped aside to let him into the bathroom.

"Zone 19 has had a complete power outage," Seth said, unscrewing the thermos cap and pouring the steaming hot water into her washbasin. "The boiler room is the only place with hot water now."

Zone 19’s hot water system normally ran on electricity. During winter power outages, they would burn fuel like coal and firewood in the boiler room to heat water. Crystal Stones could also provide energy, but Zone 19 wouldn’t waste such a valuable resource on heating water.

Beastmen only used large amounts of hot water in the winter, so the private bathrooms in some houses were only wired for electricity and not connected to the boiler room’s hot water pipes.

After pouring the water, Seth turned to Gu Ning and said, "Little Boss, why don’t you come to the public bathhouse with us tonight?"

Gu Ning waved her hands in refusal.

’I’d rather stink than go to the public bathhouse again, let alone with a bunch of Beastmen. I’d have to be crazy to do that.’

"Don’t like bathing?" Jite had appeared at the bathroom door at some point and was leaning against the frame, watching Gu Ning.