When Gu Liang saw Fox Lian strutting through the academy wearing a fox-ear headband, she nearly crushed her dragon-bone whip: "What kind of performance art is he doing now?!"
The truth lay in the details:
Day One. Fox Lian wore a pure white faux-ear headband. Meeting Emma, he lowered his head obediently: "Want to touch? These aren't sensitive." Curious, Emma reached out—only to find the texture softer than real ears, crafted from ten-thousand-year snow-silk.
Day Two. He swapped them for spirit-jade ears that twitched with his mood. In class, Emma's touch made them hum faintly, drawing the entire class's attention.
Day Three. The ears were even more outrageous—embedded with stardust, shimmering more brilliantly than his real ones under sunlight.
"I get it!" Gu Liang suddenly slammed the table, telling Cangming, who was polishing her armor: "He's launching a saturation-style ear assault!"
Cangming: "?" (Mermen could not comprehend such terrestrial logic.)
The only one who truly saw through it was Emma herself. That night, she stopped Fox Lian from donning yet another headband: "You did this on purpose." She tugged his real ear tip. "You used fake ears to make me used to touching them in public. Once everyone got accustomed…"
Fox Lian's tail curled slyly around her waist, violet eyes gleaming with triumph: "Now when you touch the real ones, no one notices."
Sure enough, the next day when Emma absentmindedly rubbed his real ears, passing classmates only glanced: "Oh, just their ear game again."
The cunning fox's perfect scheme:
Use fake ears to lower sensitivity of public intimacy
Desensitize everyone to "Emma touching fox ears"
Ultimately achieve the goal of real-ear petting anytime, anywhere
Even when the merman prince asked curiously, Fox Lian answered without blinking: "This is a diplomatic ritual between the God Clan and the Fox Clan."
Only General Cangming whispered to Gu Liang at the training grounds: "In our courtship, we also display our brightest scales to—"
"Shut up!" Gu Liang snapped, face red, dragon tail splashing water.
Meanwhile, Emma buried her face in Fox Lian's soft real ears, muffling laughter: "Next time, want to try a fake tail?"
Fox Lian's real tail flared instantly: "…That's not happening!"