Raising My Sweet, Well-Behaved Puppy-Snake to Be My Wife - Chapter 7

The little snake was even happier to receive an affirmative answer.

Puppy Mother was very kind and would surely accept Brother. If Brother liked puppies, he would definitely be willing to live with Puppy Mother as well.

The silly little snake had no idea that the “puppy” his brother kept mentioning was actually himself.

Shen Zhiqi buried his head in his work, drawing with great difficulty, but he was full of energy and grew happier the more he drew.

More and more unintelligible ink blobs appeared on the white paper, and the stack of papers with his sketches on the table grew taller and taller.

Shen Zhiheng stood behind the little snake for a long time, trying to interpret whether the little guy was dissatisfied with his drawings because they did not look like the real thing, which is why he kept drawing one after another.

He finally could not help but speak up: “Xiao Qi, shall Brother teach you how to draw?”

“Okay!” came the little snake’s sweet voice.

Brother’s drawings were certainly better than his; he could use clearer pictures to find Puppy Mother.

The more Shen Zhiqi thought about it, the more sense it made, and he gave a serious nod.

Shen Zhiheng knelt halfway behind the snake, leaning in to hold the little snake’s slightly cool, small hand.

He discovered that if he sat on the floor, he was not even as tall as the little snake, who was cushioned by his thick, mosquito-coil-like tail.

“You have to hold the pen like this. Let Brother teach you.”

Shen Zhiheng adjusted the little snake’s fingers, teaching him the correct way to hold a pen.

“Let Brother teach you how to move the pen; do not fight against me.”

Shen Zhiqi obediently agreed, but his gaze did not fall on the paper. Instead, he stared at Brother’s hand tightly gripping his own.

Brother is so hot.

The little snake’s cool hand was pressed against Brother’s palm, his skin tingling from the heat radiating from the human’s hand.

He frowned slightly, wearing a pained, pitiful expression, yet he could not bear to let Brother move away.

Brother was leaning against him from behind, compressing the space around him into a cramped and narrow enclosure, exactly the kind of space snakes loved.

He enjoyed this sense of security that fit his biological traits, and he did not want to move away while tucked in Brother’s arms.

Shen Zhiqi began to feel the heat starting from the back of his hand, then his back, until his entire body began to warm up.

Sometimes he liked temperatures higher than his own body, like when he enjoyed basking in the sun.

But he would not last long before feeling too hot and wanting to find a cool, shady place to chill out.

Xiao Qi’s attention drifted, and he noticed a water glass on the table.

He stretched his long neck, submerged his face into the glass, and gulped down the cold water.

The little snake was probably one of the few children who would not be scolded by their parents for drinking cold water.

“Are you very thirsty?”

Shen Zhiheng let go of his hand and picked up the now-empty glass.

“A little…”

Shen Zhiqi’s gaze darted away. He was not good at lying to Brother, but he did not want to be separated from him at all.

After drinking the cold water, he felt much better and could continue clinging to this warm, human branch.

“Alright, I will go get you some more. Wait for me.”

Shen Zhiheng walked away, and the little snake sat obediently on his own tail, waiting for Brother.

He touched the back of his hand, which was slightly reddened by the human’s palm, and fell into deep thought, his tongue flicking in and out.

What should I do? Snakes really love clinging to people.

I can drink more water! If I drink lots of cold water, I can keep clinging to the warm human!

For the rest of the time they spent together, whenever Shen Zhiqi felt too hot from clinging to Brother, he would lower his head to drink cold water, catch his breath, and return to stick to Brother again.

The only downside was having to run to the restroom more often, but compared to the grand matter of clinging to Brother, this small inconvenience was not worth mentioning.

Brother had a pleasant scent, and a temperature that snakes did not possess.

The snake loved all of these things.

There is no better warm, big branch in this world than Brother!

The snake thought, looking rather dull.

Shen Zhiqi had acquired enough sketches and began pestering Brother to let him paste them on the walls.

“More people need to see them!”

He hugged a stack of papers, looking at Brother with wide, expectant eyes, his tone rising with excitement.

Although Shen Zhiheng did not understand what was going on in that little snake brain, he could not say no when faced with those wide, beady eyes.

“Alright, paste them wherever you want. Brother will help you.”

He patted the snake’s little head and answered gently.

Thus, dragging his fat, heavy snake tail and hugging a stack of papers, Shen Zhiqi posted them all over the estate.

In the rooms, on the grape trellis, on the walls throughout the estate, even on the doors of the Maybach parked in the open garage, everywhere was plastered with drawings intended to find Puppy Mother.

On the posted papers were stick-figure dogs, puppy-snakes, and large stick-figure humans that did not resemble their subjects at all.

Shen Zhiqi spent several busy days pasting all his heavy stack of drawing paper.

Shen Zhiheng accompanied him, goofing off and helping him pass the tools needed for the job.

With his tiny brain, how could Xiao Qi distinguish between the inside of the estate and the outside? He just felt the forest was endless, and as long as he pasted his drawings here, someone would surely see them and pass the message to Puppy Mother.

He admired his masterpiece with satisfaction, clapped his little hands, and rested with his hands on his hips.

No one in the estate understood what Shen Zhiqi was doing. The adults just felt that the originally pristine estate had been turned into a mess by him.

Looking at their ever-increasing workload, they could not help but whisper and shake their heads silently when gathered together during breaks.

In the eyes of these mature adults, these messy, incoherent doodles were pure destruction and mischief.

It was just an uneducated, wealthy spendthrift indulging an equally mischievous little spendthrift.

They could not understand, so they just quietly treated Brother and the little snake as fodder for gossip, with no intention of looking deeper.

As for the unspeakable growing pains of the young master or the little snake’s inexplicable obsession with Puppy Mother, none of that mattered to them.

Within this estate, the little snake and his brother had once again become the only ones who truly understood each other.

Perhaps due to his age, Shen Zhiheng, who had not reached adulthood yet, was not boring like the usual adults.

He rarely felt joy and had never experienced the carefree happiness of a child, but with the little snake, he felt a sense of nonsensical happiness for the first time.

Only when seeing the little snake’s uninhibited smile did he feel happy, infected by such a vibrant expression.

In that moment, Shen Zhiheng was glad he had not fully become a boring adult.

The estate was filled with the little snake’s abstract art and expectant smiles, as if the most intense and vivid colors had been splashed across Shen Zhiheng’s boring, lonely, gray-and-white world.

For the first time, Shen Zhiheng saw true color, and for the first time, he felt pure happiness.

“Brother! The drawing I pasted on the wall fell off.”

Shen Zhiqi had picked up a drawing from the ground somewhere, waved the little piece of paper in his hand, and ran toward Brother, dragging his big tail behind him.

“Here is some glue; spread a bit more on the paper. Brother will hold you higher so you can paste it up high.”

“Okay.”

Shen Zhiqi was lifted up by his armpits by Brother.

Even when Brother carried him, tail and all, it was effortless. If he just lifted his upper body, Brother could even toss him gently into the air and catch him.

Shen Zhiqi pressed the four corners of the small paper down firmly before letting Brother put him back down.

Since the height was a bit lower now, he hugged Brother’s neck and refused to let go.

“Brother, are the snake’s drawings noticeable enough now?”

The little snake lay on Brother’s shoulder and asked in a soft voice.

“Of course they are noticeable enough. Now everyone in the entire estate can see Xiao Qi’s drawings.”

“Great!”

This way, Puppy Mother will definitely be able to see them.

Shen Zhiqi whispered to himself, lying motionless on Brother’s shoulder, while his tail, overcome with joy, began to wrap itself around Brother’s body in a chaotic mess.

In the days that followed, Shen Zhiqi waited for news from Puppy Mother while continuing to paste papers around the estate.

Shen Zhiheng followed behind him, goofing off with him; whenever they encountered a wall that was too high for the snake to reach, he would help by picking the little guy up.

A cleaning maid carrying her tools stopped Shen Zhiqi, who was intending to paste a drawing on a locked vintage iron gate.

“Little Young Master, this will not do.”

The maid reached out and pressed down on the little guy’s mischievous hand as he prepared to paste the paper on the iron gate.

“It is alright. Let him paste it.”

A cold, steady voice rang out from behind the maid.

The maid had no choice but to withdraw her hand, watching the little snake paste his messy drawings onto the gate, and silently made a prayer gesture over her chest.

Shen Zhiqi blinked, confused by the maid’s strange actions.

He looked inside through the gaps in the iron gate and frowned in confusion.

Inside was a barren hill, and the path was piled with a layer of dead, dry leaves.

Compared to the meticulously managed estate, that place looked too bleak.

The maid looked at the crooked drawings pasted on the iron gate and could not help but advise one more time:

“Young Master, this is the cemetery where the old master and old mistress are buried. It should not be treated like a child’s toy. Besides, the old mistress’s death anniversary is coming up soon.”

His grandfather had passed away early, and Shen Zhiheng’s father had taken over the family business long ago; Shen Zhiheng had not even had the chance to meet his grandfather.

As for his grandmother, who had retreated to this estate and lived a strange, melancholy life until she passed away when he was young, Shen Zhiheng had never felt the warmth of this large family and was indifferent to this so-called ancestral grave.

Seeing Brother silent and turning to look at the worried maid, Shen Zhiqi realized he had done something wrong.

He reached up and tugged at the drawing on the iron gate, only to find that the quick-drying glue on the four corners had completely set and would not come off at all.

The little guy was so anxious he did not know what to do, his tail slapping against the ground.

He gripped one side of the paper with both hands and pulled backward with all his might.

Rip!

With a crisp sound, the drawing paper tore in half, leaving one piece behind along with the stubborn glue residue at the four corners.

Shen Zhiqi held the torn drawing in his hand, looking at the ugly glue stains on the iron gate, his eyes turning red instantly.

It is over. Not only had he pasted his drawing in a place where he should not have, but he had also made a mess he could not clean up.