Chapter 22: A Brother’s Gone / Sadge

Chapter 22: A Brother’s Gone / Sadge

“I’m so mad right now!”

Chen Shiyu dragged a chair in front of the mirror and sat on it backwards, glaring at her own reflection. Her brows were furrowed tight, her cheeks puffed like a little pufferfish, and her round eyes were fixed wide open.

After staring like that for several minutes, her shoulders finally slumped. She flopped forward against the chair back.

“No good… there’s no way I can turn into a fox girl if it’s like this.”

So it really has to be some kind of intense emotional fluctuation?

That thought made her uneasy. What if one day she got too sad, or too angry, or even too happy in front of a crowd—then poof, fox ears and tail out in public? Just imagining herself being dissected in a lab, hunted down by demon-slaying exorcists, or smacked to death by some monk chanting “Dawei Tianlong!” gave her chills. She had to figure out how this transformation thing worked, and fast.

In the best-case scenario, she’d learn to transform at will—first into a fox girl, then back into a human, until she could freely switch between forms.

Biting her lip, Shiyu picked up her phone and started scrolling for anything emotional—tearjerker stories, infuriating rants, silly little clips—anything that might stir her up.

Back when she was still a guy, her tear ducts were already shallow; she’d bawl at movies all the time, though always secretly, never in front of others. And now, with this body? A total crybaby. Once she started crying, it was hard to stop.

But when she tried to cry, nothing came.

“Ughhh, this is so annoying!”

She clawed at her hair until it looked like a bird’s nest, then glanced down at her chest—which, suspiciously, might have been going through a second growth spurt—and collapsed weakly onto her bed.

“Shishi~ did you finish your homework?”

Even in a foul mood, she still answered in her brightest, most energetic voice:

“Finished already!”

Ahhh, I wanna play games so bad!

A quick glance at the time told her it was already past ten. Homework done, mirror experiments over… Normally, she’d be heading to bed. But after soaking up so much yang energy at school all day, her body was buzzing. She felt like running laps instead of sleeping.

“Do you want a late-night snack?”

“Nope, I’m good!”

The sounds from downstairs faded. Shiyu lay flat on her back, phone held above her face, idly scrolling through short videos.

When she was alone, she tried her best to strip away anything “girly” from her behavior. She ignored the feminine instincts that crept up on her, forced herself to keep her gestures casual, neutral.

Her attention drifted to her hair, messy and scattered across the sheets. An odd urge bubbled up—to smooth it down with a lick, like a fox grooming its fur.

Sitting cross-legged, she leaned forward with her elbows on her thighs, cheeks turning pink as her gaze grew restless and evasive.

The excess energy in her body didn’t just keep her from sleeping. Left idle, her thoughts started wandering to… unhealthy places.

It was like some feather kept brushing against her heart—soft, teasing strokes that left her unbearably itchy inside.

After flipping through a few dance clips of pretty girls, Shiyu quietly opened her browser.

“Just looking. That’s all. Just a peek.”

But the moment she searched, the results were filled with nothing but news reports about illegal adult content.

The sites she’d used in her past life were all tucked away in her old bookmarks, and most of them needed a VPN. Now, stuck at square one, she didn’t even know where to begin.

She frowned, frustrated, and opened her browser’s bookmarks on a whim—only for her eyes to go wide.

Holy crap! Two whole pages of 18+ sites! She couldn’t even finish scrolling through them all!

Was her predecessor really such a pervert? Where was the pure innocence a girl her age was supposed to have?

Then again, considering the original Shiyu was the kind of lovestruck idiot who tried every trick to bed her childhood friend before even turning seventeen… maybe this wasn’t so shocking.

“Well… there’s quite the variety here, huh…”

Shiyu had always been fond of novels, and maybe it was because she used to be a fox, but now she deliberately searched for stories about fox spirits and seductresses.

But most of those fox-spirit stories turned out to be… well, group activities. Way too heavy for her taste.

“I’m not some temptress fox spirit—why would I even want to put myself in that kind of scene?”

Her body grew restless, the flush on her cheeks blooming brighter and juicier, her eyes dipping with a languid, sultry hue that could have bewitched anyone watching.

Heat simmered under her skin, her own heartbeat drumming loud and clear in her ears.

The face that was supposed to look sweet and innocent now held the allure of a thousand charms—the face of a fox demoness.

Shiyu bit down hard on her lip, twisting her waist uneasily. On instinct, her hand slid downward… only to grasp at empty air.

Her dear ‘brother’—was no longer there.

“…”

It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head. The pink haze clouding her thoughts evaporated instantly, leaving her mind suddenly sharp and painfully clear.

She collapsed limply against the bedframe, overwhelmed, her heart sinking under a crushing wave of grief.

“I… I really am a girl now…”

For the first time, Chen Shiyu truly felt the loss. That faithful companion of more than twenty years was gone, abandoned her without so much as a goodbye.

When it had first disappeared, she’d been able to laugh it off, to keep calm. But now? Now the sorrow hit late, sudden and deep. She leaned against the headboard, dazed and hollow, unable to recover for a long while.

Her fox ears twitched once before drooping weakly.

Her tail lay sprawled across the bed, listless and unmoving.

Turning her head, she noticed the tail had appeared without her realizing. Reaching out, she gathered the fluffy mass into her arms like a pillow, pressed her cheek against the soft fur, and… stuck out her tongue for a small, pitiful lick.

She froze.

When she’d been a fox, licking and grooming her fur always soothed her anxiety. But now? She was human. A mouthful of hair wasn’t exactly pleasant.

“…Whatever.”

It wasn’t like she had a tail to groom most of the time anyway!

So she kept at it—self-pitying, miserable, licking her tail until the fur lay sleek and smooth. And gradually, her mood lifted. The tail swished happily a few times, her ears perking back up.

This time, she clearly felt it—the fox ears and tail pulling back into her body.

“…It’s the yang energy, isn’t it?”

She focused, and sure enough, something inside her seemed to settle, and with a shoop, the ears and tail vanished.

“‘Yang energy’ is just the name I slapped on it,” she muttered. “Could just as well call it qi, or mana, or heck, chakra for all I care.”

Whatever the term, she had finally sensed it. And not only sensed it—she’d learned how to control it.

“So that’s how it is… The fox form is my real body. Hiding the ears and tail is just instinct—an automatic trick powered by yang energy.”

Even without consciously controlling it, her body could do it naturally. It was too natural. So natural that she had never realized the energy was there at all.

It was just like breathing: you do it without thinking, but only when you remember can you consciously control your breath.

The discovery sent a thrill of excitement through her. She leapt out of bed, rushing to the mirror like a kid who’d just gotten a brand-new toy.

“Ears, come out! —And go back!”

“Tail! Back in! Oh man—when it’s out, my balance really is way better!”

Her jumping and running around made enough noise to shake the floorboards. Unsurprisingly, her mother’s sharp voice drifted up from downstairs:

“Chen Shiyu! It’s the middle of the night! Why aren’t you asleep?!”

“I’m going to!”