Chapter 258: 34. Complaints
“Knock, knock, knock…”
After Aoxi spoke intermittently, the whole room fell into a brief silence, even Fisher, who was recording her external data, was momentarily unsure of what she had said.
It wasn’t until Emhart, who had been watching the scene at the table behind him, couldn’t bear to watch any longer and began to repeatedly bang his square-shaped face against the tabletop that Fisher snapped out of his daze.
He glanced at Aoxi on the bed and saw that she was still obediently holding the parrot steel knife in her arms, calmly watching him. Her cute appearance, favored by the gentlemen of Nali, was mixed with a hint of strength characteristic of the ladies of Sardinia, giving her a complex and charming aura.
Especially when Fisher’s gaze inadvertently fell on her cool shorts just below her abdomen, he couldn’t help but recall the muffled moans he heard from next door that night at the restaurant, as well as the smooth egg covered in a bit of water stains.
Academically speaking, Fisher was quite curious about how the Cangniao tribe laid eggs; personally, he was a gentleman of Nali who particularly liked ladies.
As this thought came to him, the heat within him, which had just cooled down, began to stir once more, but that discomfort lasted only a few seconds. The next moment, Fisher opened his mouth, laid the steel pen he held horizontally across the notepad, and suppressed the desire that had risen.
He rubbed his temples and, with a bit of a headache, asked Aoxi, “Love… wait, Aoxi, let me ask you first, do you know what it means to be in love with someone?”
Aoxi lifted the steel knife slightly to place it in front of her face, using its small head as part of the cloak that originally covered her face. This seemed to help her words flow more smoothly.
“Um, I might know… on the ship, I saw Alagina always looking at you, talking closely with you, and in the end… she even held your hand. Does this count as love? It feels different from talking to other crew members. I don’t know why, but when I look at Alagina, I feel a bit itchy in my heart and want to try it… so…”
While speaking, Aoxi’s feet curled tighter, as if a wild bird was tightly grasping a branch, leaving Fisher both amused and helpless. He looked at her and asked, “Is this what you call love?”
“…Isn’t it?”
Aoxi slowly sat up from the bed, tilting her steel knife with her as she looked at Fisher with slight confusion.
Faced with that gaze, Fisher didn’t answer immediately. After a pause of several seconds, he seemed to understand something and nodded, placing his notepad and pen aside.
“I see. Then let’s give it a try…”
“Eh? Try… what?”
“Holding hands.”
Perhaps even Aoxi didn’t expect Fisher to agree so readily, leaving her caught off guard. It wasn’t until Fisher actually stood up that she instinctively leaned closer to him.
Behind them, Emhart turned around with wide eyes, appearing as if he couldn’t bear to look. He didn’t know whether he was silently condemning Fisher’s reckless actions in his heart.
Alagina, oh Alagina, I was just joking when I said I wouldn’t stand together with you! You just left, and such things are happening! Living under this guy’s roof, I’ve warned you to the point of exhaustion, so don’t blame me.
Fisher was unaware of Emhart’s thoughts; instead, he gently reached out his hand towards Aoxi. As his palm descended and slowly stroked Aoxi’s feathers, her breathing began to quicken until his hand stopped at the folded position of her wings, her accelerated breathing peaked.
Aoxi blinked in surprise, not expecting the feathers on her body to tremble slightly under such a touch, like wings adjusting while gliding.
Unlike what she had imagined, Aoxi felt very unaccustomed to such contact. The slightly raised feathers, seemingly ready to support her take-off, were proof of this. Yet she pursed her lips, silently enduring and allowing Fisher to continue stroking her wings.
Can it hold up?
Fisher noticed her reaction and deliberately stroked the inner feathers closer to her body, and when his body heat truly approached her, a shocking sensation finally made Aoxi unable to endure it any longer and she suddenly opened her wings.
“Whoosh!”
The gigantic wings of the Cangniao tribe filled the already cramped room, and the broad tail feathers fluttered wildly with the sharp cold wind they created, a gust of wind erupted, knocking Fisher’s hand away from her.
Emhart, unable to bear to look, heard the commotion and mistakenly thought the greedy Fisher was getting his deserved retribution, so he turned his head back with schadenfreude. However, he was disappointed to see Fisher calmly retracting his hand.
“Ha… I’m sorry, Fisher…”
Aoxi, having already spread her wings, gasped and glanced apologetically at Fisher and the chaotic state of the room.
But Fisher showed no extra expression; he merely nodded and picked up the experimental records and pen that had been blown to the ground, returning to his previous chair.
“It’s okay.”
Emhart also flew back to his shoulder from the table behind, curiously watching Aoxi fold her wings bit by bit.
Just as she anxiously drew her wings in, Fisher suddenly spoke.
“Actually, Aoxi… you didn’t feel anything from my touching, and even felt quite resistant, right?”
Fisher’s abrupt inquiry was about the earlier hand-holding. Aoxi understood this and, after hesitating for a second, nodded.
“Um…”
After her response, Fisher continued, “This isn’t surprising. We don’t have any feelings; we aren’t even acquaintances. You can’t possibly experience love through this way. You also won’t be able to feel what Alagina felt… or, to put it another way, Aoxi, do you really want to experience what Alagina experienced? Or are you trying to get a little revenge on Alagina through this?”
Aoxi’s eyes widened slightly, as if something in her heart had been hit by Fisher’s words, but his hand holding the paper and pen remained light.
His gaze swept over the recorded content; he had no lack of external data regarding this research on Aoxi. What remained was a need for focused attention on her wings.
“Aoxi, in my opinion, you are somewhat resentful towards Alagina, right? Everything you’ve told me today, including your desire to experience love with me, actually stems from that resentment in your heart.”
“Alagina left Sardinia with all her subordinates, including you, but the one who was closest to her and who she should have trusted the most was not given her utmost care. As the only subhuman on the ship, she knows nothing about your particular situation—about your need to interact and communicate with others and your desire to collect those relics.”
“She thinks that the loyal and taciturn bodyguard in her impression should remain that way, which is why she treats you as she does, believing that giving you money and having you continue to play the role of her bodyguard would suffice. This has led you to endure loneliness and solitude alone on the ship’s mast, accompanied only by the parrot steel knife…”
Sitting on the bed, Aoxi looked at Fisher, sadness swelling within her as she opened her mouth. The steel knife in her arms seemed to sense her mood and hurriedly rubbed its small head against her, attempting to ease her unease.
“I… I just…”
She wanted to argue but felt deep down that Fisher was right. Over the past time, she indeed bore some resentment towards Alagina.
After leaving Sardinia to become a pirate, they spent all their days on the vast and empty sea, which was certainly different from being in Sardinia, where she constantly faced the tracking and surveillance of her mother.
The emerging legendary pirate captain didn’t require a loyal bodyguard by her side at all times. However, after the circumstances changed, Alagina had not arranged for Aoxi to do anything else, especially since she had never been familiar with the human soldiers in the military. This led to her current predicament.
Of course, this didn’t mean that Aoxi shifted all the blame onto Alagina, nor did it mean that she was disloyal to her.
She understood that her timid personality clashed with other women from her kingdom, making it very difficult for her to communicate with others. This was why she had kept the little resentment that arose from Alagina’s neglect buried deep in her heart until today when it was discovered by Fisher, an outsider.
“I understand… Alagina has too many things to consider. The pursuit from the kingdom, various bounty orders, the safety of the Iceberg Queen. Yet… with so many things to attend to, after you came aboard, she still managed to focus entirely on you. Why has she not noticed that I still need her help?”
She drew her huge wings in a little, wrapping her body within the feathers, her gaze drifting to the parrot steel knife in her arms, her voice tinged with melancholy.
Seeing Aoxi wrap herself up again like she did on the Iceberg Queen, Fisher set down his pen.
“It seems our deal will have another requirement. Besides helping you integrate into your ship, we also need to resolve the little problem between you and Alagina.”
Aoxi didn’t even lift her gaze, only softly asking, “Will you tell Alagina what happened today?”
“No.”
“…Thank you.”
Hearing Fisher’s firm reply, Aoxi finally looked up and secretly stole a glance at Fisher, who was still looking down at his experimental records.
For some reason, after that one sentence, a peculiar feeling began to spread within her heart.
It wasn’t a quickening, nor did it adhere to the usual calmness; it felt more like a warm stream gradually spreading from the spot where Fisher had touched her wings…
What had originally been a little revenge for being overlooked by Alagina now morphed into something else entirely. Recalling the gentle touch of this human on her wings, she suddenly understood a bit why Alagina adored such contact so much.
Her small face hidden beneath her wings flushed slightly, the feeling of betraying Alagina mixed with a newly found sense of joy, forming a complex and somewhat contradictory emotion within her heart.
But, she didn’t dislike it.
“Alright, this issue isn’t difficult for me. Let’s wait until Alagina returns to discuss it. Before that, let’s finish this secret research. It won’t take long.”
“Ah? Um, research… By the way, Fisher, aren’t you going to eat? It’s going to get cold.”
“Right, and the lunch you bought for me, I almost forgot.”
Once Fisher started the research, he seemed very enthusiastic. Although pure subhuman academic research felt somewhat tedious, occasionally gaining small stories about the experimental samples made it interesting.
After saying this, he turned his gaze to the eel rice Aoxi had brought back to the room, but it was then that Fisher suddenly realized that, besides the two plates of eel rice, Aoxi had also brought back two standard coffee cups.
The white coffee mugs had no extra markings, only a pair of somewhat cute fluffy cat ears, which raised Fisher’s alertness because that was the logo of the “Cloudtop Café,” where the Cloud Cat tribe maid he encountered earlier worked.
And the Cloudtop Café should be at the end of this street. With Aoxi’s personality, it was absolutely impossible for her to go buy coffee by herself.
Thinking of this, Fisher quickly asked Aoxi, “Wait, Aoxi, where did this coffee come from?”
“This is… when I just ordered, a maid from the café was promoting their samples in the hotel lobby, saying it was a gift for us to drink… Don’t worry, I checked just now; it didn’t cost extra, and there’s no poison inside…”
Seeing Aoxi’s cautious demeanor, seemingly worried she had spent too much of Fisher’s money, she explained.
Fisher smiled silently, indicating that he wasn’t concerned about her spending too much, after which she seemed to relax and peeked her head out from her wings.
It was normal for Aoxi to be unaware; not to mention ordinary people, if Fisher didn’t have the cheat-like playback function from the Supplement Handbook for Sub-Humans, he wouldn’t have discovered any issues with those Cloud Cat maids.
But the current issue was that Fisher was somewhat uncertain whether the coffee being delivered was a coincidence or if those spies from the Northern Region were targeting his group.
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(End of this chapter)
