Pet King

Zhang Zian had only heard Sihwa’s regular song once in Germany. It was not her low-frequency songs. He could not hear them, anyway, as they were beyond the audible range of human ears.

Sihwa’s songs were not in any language from around the world. Even Richard, who claimed to know a million human and bird languages, could not understand them. But her voice was pure and serene. No contaminating sound could be found in it.

Clearly, Richard had to claim responsibility.

He rushed out of the bathroom to get Richard, yet the b*tchy bird had a premonition and flew away.

Fine. It was probably nothing. Just consider them as beats.

“When will you buy a phone for me?” Sihwa blinked her eyes and asked expectantly. “This hour, or the next hour?”

Zhang Zian said, “Your time range is too narrow… Should be within today. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Oh. I have to wait that long?” she whimpered, then said, as if she remembered something, “Right, I also want a pretty phone case!” She pointed outside the small window. “I see a lot of girls with pretty phone cases!”

“Okay. No problem.”

Zhang Zian agreed. After walking out of the bathroom with his phone, he could still hear Sihwa yelling excitedly, “Cellphone! Cellphone! I’m finally getting a phone! Now I can surely make that fat orange cat jealous!”

“Pi, do you have time now? I need to use the computer.” He came to the desk.

“Eek!”

Pi nodded, saved the Word file, jumped off the chair, then started walking around the room to exercise.

Zhang Zian played the recorded file saved in his phone on the loudspeaker. Then he opened up the online shopping website to pick a phone for Sihwa. Luckily, it was March seventh and eighth, the ladies’ festival. Most online shopping websites were doing promotions. One could imagine that many gentlemen’s wallets were about to lose weight.

At first, he wanted to get the cheapest phone, as Sihwa had never used a phone before and could not tell the difference, but then he realized he could not. She would be using the phone in the bathtub, so it could fall into the water easily––then he would need to buy a new one. He might as well start off with a good, waterproof phone.

None of the waterproof phones were cheap, even with the promotion. He closed his eyes, made the order, and checked out. He also bought a girlish case with it.

After he finished, he left the computer to Pi and left his bedroom with the underwater loudspeaker.

The door of his parents’ bedroom was slightly open. It was dark inside. He pushed the door and entered. The thick curtain was drawn in his parents’ room. The only light source was the lamps for the aquarium tanks. It was very dark inside.

Zhang Zian walked in after his eyes were used to the darkness. The high-end aquarium fans normally prepared a separate room for their aquatic creatures. Basements without windows were the best. Artificial lighting was used to completely replace natural light, as the artificial lights nowadays could mimic natural light almost perfectly. The overlap of natural and artificial light was not good.

There was no basement in the Amazing Fate Pet Shop, nor in the shoe store next door. But his parents’ bedroom was empty and could be made useful.

“Meow.” In the dark room, Galaxy’s silver-grey eyes were exceptionally bright. It sat on the blanket and put its face close to the tank. It was fixated on the dark and mysterious marine world inside. After hearing Zhang Zian open the door, it turned its head, lifted a front paw, and said happily, “Meow. Good morning, Zian!” It hadn’t wanted to wake the other sleeping elfins earlier. Now it gave a real greeting.

“Good morning, Galaxy. You are watching the corals again.” Zhang Zian was not surprised, as Galaxy had been touring the bedroom every morning to look at the corals before heading downstairs to play hide-and-seek.

“Meow. The corals are so pretty.” Galaxy nodded and added, “So are the fish!”

The “fish” it referred to were not really fish but the sea angels.

Inside the room, a few tanks stood against the walls, separated by books, shelves, and other objects, so that the lights would not interfere with the tanks. Apart from the tanks for the corals, there was a tank dedicated to sea angels. To keep the temperature low, there was another tank outside that tank with ice packs in between.

The two fully grown sea angels floated in the cold water, fluttered their transparent wings, and tried to get close to each other. The antennas on their heads had felt the existence of one another. In their translucent chest cavities, their heart-shaped organs were growing brighter and redder, like burning flames of love.

The night before, after preparing the saltwater, installing the equipment, and making sure everything was working properly, Zhang Zian finally released them from the pet columns in the game. He could not afford to lose them in the early stages of his project. Luckily, after adapting overnight, they seemed to have accepted their new environment and had started thinking about reproduction after their basic needs were met. It was exactly what Zhang Zian had hoped for.

After repeated attempts, they finally got past the initial shyness, stretched out their suction cups, and attached to each other with them. Then they started dancing in the water. Very few mating processes in the animal kingdom were as romantic and beautiful as theirs. It was a waltz that lasted for hours.

Zhang Zian closed the door and held his breath, afraid of bothering them with any noise. But in fact, their mating process was not that vulnerable.

No matter how elegant the dance might have looked, it got boring after you stared at it for too long. He turned his eyes and watched the tank next to it.

This tank was also cooled with ice packs and held a few helicid pteropods. The Chinese name of helicid pteropod was the word “snail.” Yet, they looked completely different from cone snails and the Oliva emicator. Their bodies were almost transparent, including the shells. A pair of pea-leaf-shaped translucent wings fluttered like a dancing butterfly. Therefore, they had a more appropriate nickname: “sea butterflies.”

The helicid pteropods were also gorgeous––they were attractive enough to be the stars of the aquarium. Yet, their most important mission was to be the sea angels’ food. Sea angels had a surprisingly monotonous dinner menu, just like pandas. Their only food was the helicid pteropods.

Zhang Zian also hoped the helicid pteropods would breed quickly and give birth to more helicid pteropods.

He wasn’t worried about the sea angels starving before it got to that point. That was because sea angels could survive a long time without food. Maybe the cold water temperature lowered their metabolism. They could survive by only feeding once a year.

The third tank was like the previous two, with a smaller tank inside a bigger tank and ice packs in between. The difference in the third tank was that there was thick ice floating on top of the water, which meant the tank needed an even lower temperature––almost 0 degrees Celsius. Yet the tank was empty.

What kind of creature could live in such a low temperature?