012: Little Cat: Muttering Under His Breath!
Xia Moye was sitting in the backseat. He stretched his body as far forward as he could until his head was wedged neatly into the gap between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat.
He looked left at Tang Yu, then right at Sang Zhao, his eyes full of longing.
One glance at that expression and Sang Zhao knew exactly what it meant.
Hurry up, hurry up and say yes, so we can all go out and play together.
Honestly, he wanted to say yes too but his rational side still managed to stop him.
If he was being real with himself, he didn’t trust Xia Moye at all.
Actually, it wasn’t just that he didn’t trust Xia Moye. He didn’t trust himself either.
His little cat’s “pretend to be human” career had only just started a few days ago. He couldn’t let it crash and burn already. There were still so many delicious things he hadn’t eaten yet.
Too much had already happened today. Right now, all he wanted was to go back to his apartment, take out his precious little cloth from his sea of consciousness, turn back into a little orange cat, and knead away his stress all over that soft square.
So Sang Zhao rushed to find an excuse and, heart aching, turned down Tang Yu’s invitation.
“Heh, well, um, we should skip today. His parents are at home waiting to yell at him. If we get back late, they’ll be even angrier.”
The light turned red, and Tang Yu came to a stop. He tilted his head, looking at Sang Zhao.
His gaze was still gentle, his voice still soft, but the sensitive cat could faintly sense that Tang Yu’s mood had sunk a little.
Tang Yu still replied politely, “Alright then.”
The car went quiet. When the light turned green again and the car started moving, Tang Yu kept his eyes on the road and tried one more time.
“Are you really not going to let me treat you both to dinner? Xia Moye, what do you think?”
What did Moye think? Moye thought that anyone who pat his head like that couldn’t be a bad person.
Wedged in the gap between the two front seats, he spoke right next to both of their ears.
So both Tang Yu and Sang Zhao heard clearly when Xia Moye let out a long, dramatic sigh.
He sounded like a tiny little grown-up, all pitiful and resigned. “I don’t have a choice. I need to hurry home and get scolded.”
Tang Yu then asked Sang Zhao quietly, “What about you?”
Heartbroken, Sang Zhao forced out two stupid little laughs. “Heh, I need to hurry home and scold him.”
When they reached the subway station they’d mentioned earlier, both Sang Zhao and Xia Moye got out of the car.
Tang Yu’s car idled there at the curb. Sang Zhao had already dragged Xia Moye a few steps away when he suddenly heard a clear voice from behind him.
Someone was calling his name.
“Sang Zhao!”
He turned around. Tang Yu had leaned out of the driver’s window, watching them. He called out Sang Zhao’s name and lifted a hand in a wave.
It was already evening. The sun was sinking, no longer bright white but a golden orange like a ripe mandarin. It hung there like a big duck egg, turning the whole sky into a bottle of fizzy orange soda.
Against that sunset, Tang Yu leaned halfway out of the driver’s side window and waved at him.
Bathed in that warm haze, Tang Yu smiled at them, his features softened by the sunset. “See you tomorrow.”
Standing on the sidewalk, still holding on to the kid, Sang Zhao spun around in place and dragged Xia Moye with him like he was a little pinwheel.
“See you tomorrow!”
He shouted back just as loudly.
See you tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d go to work like always.
–
Stumbling and bumping their way along, they finally made it back to the apartment building.
Once they got home, both Sang Zhao and Xia Moye let out a long breath at the exact same time.
Nice. They’d gotten away with it.
They’d survived the parent-teacher meeting, and also survived running into the boss. Massive luck streak.
Sang Zhao flopped down on the sofa, his little cat brain completely unable to function anymore. He didn’t even have the energy to ask why this dog had barged into a cat’s home and was now sitting on his sofa.
He sprawled there for a while before he collected himself enough to repeat everything the homeroom teacher had said to him.
When he finished recounting it all, he summed up tiredly, “That’s about it.”
“Anyway, I did my best. You figure out a way to contact the Yao Bureau and see if there’s anyone who can pretend to be your parents.”
Xia Moye propped his chin up, just as helpless.
He had no ideas at all, so naturally his thoughts turned right back to Sang Zhao.
The way he was looking at him made the fur prickle along Sang Zhao’s spine. “What are you doing? I’m telling you now, don’t even think about it.”
“I’m saying this up front. This was a one-time deal.”
But Xia Moye was itching to push his luck. He scooted closer and started clinging.
“The homeroom teacher can’t tell who’s behind a WeChat account. You can be my uncle and my mom at the same time, okay?”
…Was that supposed to be human language or dog language?
Annoyed, Sang Zhao jabbed him with his elbow. “You fluffy potato dog! Of course it’s not okay!”
Still fixated on making this work, Xia Moye kept pestering. “Good kitty, you’re the best kitty. Cat, please help Moye!”
“No way,” Sang Zhao refused instantly.
When pestering didn’t work, Xia Moye’s stomach started to rumble. He touched his belly, smacked his lips, and decided he was hungry.
“Okay, let’s stop talking about that for now. Come downstairs to my place and eat frozen pizza, Cat.”
You could always put off thinking about the homeroom teacher. You could not put off eating.
If they’d said they were having a meal, that meant there’d be a meal. If they said they were eating now, that meant they were eating now.
He tried to drag Sang Zhao up off the sofa and downstairs.
“Don’t worry, Moye knows how to use the oven. I’ll bake the frozen pizza for you. It smells really good. It’s tomato meat sauce with shrimp. Cats like shrimp, right? Moye knows that.”
“There’s beer in the fridge too. Cat, come on. Have you ever had beer?”
Sang Zhao’s little cat face stayed flat and unimpressed.
What, you think I’m some clueless little cat?
…He had, in fact, never had beer before.
But judging from how this sounded, the orange cat who went to work had never had beer, yet the Samoyed who went to school had?
At least he knew some of the rules of human society.
“Isn’t alcohol banned for minors?” he asked suspiciously.
Fearless as ever, a little guilty but still stubborn, Xia Moye replied, “Human laws don’t apply to yaoguai! Back when Moye was pulling sleds across the Siberian plain, if it wasn’t for drinking beer, I would’ve frozen solid into a block of dog tofu already.”
He did have his own little brand of cunning.
“Don’t worry, nothing will happen,” he whispered. “I asked Teacher Bian to buy it for me. Teacher Bian is a graduate advisor, you know. That way we’re not breaking human laws, right?”
Sang Zhao couldn’t help it. “The law says you can’t drink, not that you can’t buy. Getting a border collie to buy it for you is not some big legal loophole…”
Still, whatever.
He’d never tried cold beer, and he’d never eaten pizza either. Now he was about to try both at once.
A blessed cat life. He could temporarily tolerate this dumb dog.
He stood up, ready to go downstairs with Xia Moye to the dog’s apartment.
He’d only taken two steps when he suddenly remembered something and asked casually, “Oh right, when my homeroom talk was still going on, what were you and Tang Yu talking about in the hallway?”
Oh, that.
Xia Moye tilted his head and tried to remember.
He wasn’t totally sure what Tang Yu had meant at the time. Whether there was some hidden meaning, he honestly didn’t know. So all he could do now was give a brief summary of what he thought had happened.
His summary might not have been perfectly accurate, but he tried his best.
After thinking really hard, he said uncertainly, “I think… he wants to be Moye’s ‘Uncle Mom.’”
Sang Zhao, who’d just been about to move, froze completely.
He stood there and slowly let out a sound.
“…Huh?”
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