Chapter 150: Little Ones
But immediately, Luka gently slapped himself as he shook his head. "What am I doing? What’s wrong with me...?"
Sunnie turned to him. "What is it?"
Luka blinked, staring at her before he said with a forced smile, "Mosquitoes."
Sunnie shrugged as she turned to continue her observation. She stared closely.
"What are you doing?"
"Making an observation," she explained.
"Observing what?"
Sunnie stared for a while. Although she couldn’t see the faces of these animals, she could tell what they were doing. There was a huge portion of meat before them, and all of them were finding ways to share it equally amongst themselves. They were eating.
While Sunnie continued observing to figure out what animals these little ones were, Luka felt something crawling around his neck. Slowly, he turned to see a huge spider coming down toward him.
Immediately, shock filled his veins as he let out a sharp scream. Luka stepped backwards and also bumped into Sunnie. The two of them found themselves falling hard to the ground.
But Luka immediately protected Sunnie by grabbing her by the waist and turning her around. Now Luka was the one whose back met the hard ground as Sunnie fell on top of him.
He lay there, his hand around Sunnie’s waist while he held her firmly. Their bodies were almost close, their faces nearly touching. Their eyes locked, their breath brushing against each other’s faces.
Sunnie felt her heart beating fast as she stared at his face, and Luka’s heart was already beating loud and beyond control as he kept staring at her lips. He had flashbacks—ones that made his cheeks flush.
For over a minute, they remained like that, lying close to each other and staring. At that moment, Luka’s mind spoke up.
"Can I taste your lips again...?" He simply had no control over what his mind was saying, and he found himself speaking. It was already too late to take it back.
He simply stared at Sunnie, their eyes locked and their breaths heavy.
At that moment, they heard noise from their side. The little animals had noticed them. Sunnie immediately jerked back to reality as she got up from Luka’s body.
The two of them stood up and brushed themselves clean as if nothing had happened. Luka was clearly flustered by the incident even though he struggled to keep calm. Sunnie, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why she too was getting all flustered. Her heart was pounding, and she had actually wanted to kiss him again.
At that moment, she couldn’t help but realize that she had probably fallen for Luka too.
Sunnie turned around to where these little animals were. Now she had a better view of them because they were standing close to their meat, staring at them as if they had seen a ghost.
Sunnie blinked. "Chipmunks?"
They were little hybrid chipmunk beastmen—little humans who had the tails, ears, noses, and teeth of chipmunks. They wore little animal skin clothings to cover themselves.
Sunnie stared at all of them. She counted about ten. She looked at these little beastmen, who stared back without fear or hesitation.
"Who are you?" one of them asked. He was standing in front of them all, so it was easy for Sunnie to tell that he was their leader.
Sunnie was impressed that they could talk. As expected, their voices were tiny and sounded like what she had heard on TV from cartoons.
"What are you doing here? What do you want from us?" another asked, a female.
Sunnie and Luka blinked, staring down at these fearless little things who weren’t running from seeing giants like them. Rather, they were even about to attack in defense.
Another said, "I’ve seen them before. They’re here for the contest."
"Oh, me too," one said.
"Isn’t she the jinxed rabbit?"
"Yes. The jinxed rabbit and her crazy husbands," another added.
These chipmunks spoke so fast that it was somewhat hard to keep up, but Sunnie and Luka understood what they were saying.
Having discussed who Sunnie and Luka were, they looked up at them again and blinked. "And what do you guys want from us? Are you here to kill us or something?" their leader questioned. He had a firm, unapproachable expression as he spoke.
Sunnie forced a smile as she shook her head. "No. We’d never do that. I saw you passing by and was fascinated, so I came to take a look."
"Or are you here to give us food?" another asked, a chubby chipmunk beastman. "I heard the food they made for the competition was really good and foreign!"
"Really?!" Some were instantly intrigued.
But their leader kept a cold expression as he said, "Shut up. You can’t always be eating."
The chubby chipmunk frowned. "But we’re hungry." Their stomachs grumbled.
"We have meat," the leader insisted.
"But it won’t be enough for us. We haven’t eaten since morning," the chubby one pointed out.
"Yes. They’ve refused to feed us for a long time. We need something decent to eat. We can’t always be relying on these crops and stuff," another supported.
Sunnie simply observed in silence. He didn’t say anything but made him observations of these little ones ro know how to follow them up soon.
The leader snapped, "We have to manage. We are not here to eat or anything. We are here to work. That’s what we do." He spoke authoritatively.
Sunnie simply stared. She was now intrigued to know who these chipmunks were and what their relationship with the boar tribe was. From the looks of things, it wasn’t ordinary at all. They weren’t just trespassing animals coming to steal food.
With that, Sunnie thought of something as she smiled. "Well, I also noticed that you guys were chased out of the general kitchen. If you have nothing to eat, you can surely come to my place. I have enough to share, and I’m more than happy to give you all some."