Living with Monsters

Chapter 7: The Creepy Fish Soup
Translator: JuneZ
Okay, although my ‘living alone with the sweet girl’ fantasy was ended by Ye, the chef didn’t not look like a bad person. And, her dishes had conquered me and my tenants.

“Uh…Mr landlord, may I, may I talk to you for a second, in private?”

Ye whisperer to me, I noticed Summer and Weird Unkie suddenly had this strange look on their faces and they started to turn their ears toward me and Ye.

“Yes, sure.” I followed Ye to her room.

‘She is tall! If Summer were a flower bud, Ye would be a fully opened flower.’ She looked at me bashfully, she wanted to say something but seemed not able to open her mouth.

She was blushing. Then she gritted her teeth and made up her mind. She unfastened her collar button.

“Wait! What are you doing?!!” I flushed, Ye was too blunt, she did not even say a word about her feelings for me.

“Ye, stop, I’m still a boy!” I murmured. But to my surprise, she reached her hand in the collar and pulled out a necklace, it was a silver chain with a plain crystal pendant.

“Sorry I could not say it outside, it’s too embarrassing. I don’t have money to pay the rent, but I’ll be at work soon. Can I put this in pledge and pay you later when I got my salary?”

She said this timidly, looking at me with her watery eyes. I was shamed by my foolish assumption earlier, but what she did was absolutely unnecessary.

“No problem, you can pay the rent anytime.” I said in embarrassment, rushing to the door.

“Thank you so much!” She followed me to the door.

The door was open, Summer and Weird Unkie immediately turned their back, pretending they were not listening. Summer felt no shame and even asked:” What were you talking? “

Ye and me were blushing, we looked at each other and could not say a word.

Suddenly it was all dark!

Summer screamed and bumped into me and I knocked down Ye, we rolled together. Summer was over me and I was on top of Ye. My hand was on something…that was very soft.

When Weird Unkie came to us with a flashlight, I was wiping my bleeding nose which was hit by furious Summer. But, It was Ye that I was touching?

It was awkward, I had to say something. “Oh, the power is off, but no worries, we have a generator in our backyard.”

Power outage was a normal thing, we had a power generation room and a small petrol generator in the backyard. I opened the door to the backyard, Ye and me headed to start the generator.

No one had been to the backyard for a while, the grass was not mowed and the trees were not trimmed. I was not the one to blame. The gardener was off for many days, mom never cared about it and I had to go to school.

When we stepped into the grass, some grasshoppers jumped away in fear.

We heard a splash and turned back, a fish jumped high in the moonlight and swallowed a grasshopper. It was a big golden fish which seemed pretty cool in a moon night.

The fish swallowed the grasshopper and dropped into the darkness, splashed water everywhere. I remembered, there was an old well. But it was sealed since no one used it anymore.

Ye and me ran to the well, the water in the well was reflecting the moon.

I was speechless because the cement lid used to seal the well was moved, I was sure the well was covered all the time.

Ye was excited, ”That is a big fish! Wonderful fresh food!Hurry up, let’s catch it!”

Some grasshoppers leaped over the well and we saw the fish jumping out of the well again. It was fast and beautiful, its golden scales reflected the moonlight, reminded me of this saying that when a golden fish jumps over the dragon gate, it becomes a dragon.(1)

The fish was about to fall back to the well when Ye bravely caught it with bare hands! But the fish was slippery, it got out of Ye’s hands and jumped into her shirt!

Ah, how I wished to be that fish!

Annotation:

(1)Golden fish jumping over the dragon gate is a Chinese idiom, people say that when a student gets into a great university or when someone gets promoted. It also implies that one has to do hard work to achieve success.