No Tentacles Allowed

Half-dead office drone sweetheart × aloof, damp, tentacled monster

Cheng Yiyao was an utterly ordinary office drone.

One night, after working overtime, she found a blue-glowing octopus by a manhole on her way home.

Guided by the principle that every life deserves to be cherished, she took the little octopus home.

Later, a Chinese executive of foreign descent suddenly joined the company.

Cheng Yiyao looked at the man through her thick lenses. His eyes were the blue of the deep sea, a little like those of the small octopus she kept at home.

Though their relationship was nothing more than superior and subordinate, she dreamed about him.

“Take a sip, and we’ll become one.”

The man gripped her wrist. A streak of blood seeped from his pale skin. His long hair brushed her waist, and his deep blue eyes were close enough to touch.

Every time she woke from one of those dreams, Cheng Yiyao thought she must be going crazy. She couldn’t even tell the man in her dreams apart from her real-life boss.

On workdays, she would stare into space, pen in hand, writing a few lines in her “Little Octopus Observation Log.” Out of the corner of her eye, she would catch her boss sneaking a hand toward the afternoon tea that had just arrived.

A look of inexplicable longing and reverence appeared on the man’s expressionless face. He bit into a pastry and chewed mechanically, the tips of his ears turning red.

*

“What is a kiss? Do you do it with other human males?”

With only a door between them, Cheng Yiyao could even hear her colleagues talking.

“Does your temperature rise when you kiss?”

The man held her wrist captive. Where their skin touched, the cold sank to the bone.

His tall silhouette advanced step by step, his shadow falling over her. Cheng Yiyao couldn’t make out his features, but guessed he must be wearing that absurd, robotic expression.

“Don’t you like me touching you like this? But didn’t you touch its tentacles?”

The man’s eyelids trembled twice. As if something had occurred to him, his features shifted into an unusual expression.

At last, he was close enough for Cheng Yiyao to see his face.

His handsome, finely sculpted features curved in excitement, and his deep blue pupils were dark as the sea.

“Will you do these things with me? Will you… sleep beside me in the eternal darkness?”

Little Octopus Observation Log:

1. The little octopus is only half the size of my palm. It has a round, plump body, deep blue with a few silver markings.

2. The little octopus has four tentacles, short and thick, like four blue sausages. Its tentacle tips have pale pink suckers that grow a little warm if you touch them for long enough.

3. The little octopus likes to steal sweets. After eating, its blue tentacles turn faintly pink. But can octopuses really eat sweets?

4. The little octopus doesn’t like staying in a plastic tub and keeps climbing out. I bought it a glass tank.

A few notes beforehand:

1. The heroine is an office drone who has been repeatedly beaten down by life and has become all the more seasoned for it. She isn’t actually trying to die.

2. The hero is nonhuman, with the faintest touch of Lovecraftian horror. He is emotionally detached, restrained and distant on the surface, but twisted and damp within.

3. The story includes some shared-sensation and shared-dream elements, purely in service of the plot.

4. Sweet and clean romance, one-on-one.

Blurb first written on April 8, 2026

Screenshots have been taken of multiple versions

Theme: Live well in every moment