027: Not a Little Kitty, but a Big Demon King
Sang Zhao giggled. “Not long, not long at all.”
An Tihu smoothed out her complicated emotions and gave Sang Zhao a look full of meaning.
Just as she had suspected from the very beginning, of course. Sang Zhao was not some simple little kitty at all.
She had been working here for two or three years without exposing her identity. Then Sang Zhao arrived and, in less than three weeks, had pried open her pelican skull, no, her disguise.
An Tihu: …So how exactly did she blow her cover?
Clearly Sang Zhao did not look smart… An Tihu drew a deep breath. No, no, no, maybe all of that is just his act.
Well then. A crafty cat, using a dumb front to cover himself, quietly probing and testing behind the scenes.
In the end, he had only needed three short weeks to wreck her two or three years of “passing as human.”
On top of that, she was a bird and he was a cat. If it really came down to a fight, what good was a big pelican beak? Cats are the best at catching birds.
An Tihu’s throat worked. Her danger sense went straight to maximum. She spoke very carefully. “Not long… huh…”
Right now, in her eyes, Sang Zhao’s one-meter-ninety frame seemed to be wreathed in a haze of gray-black shadows.
In the cramped storage room, in An Tihu’s view, this was no little kitty. This was the Big Demon King who had ripped off her disguise.
An Tihu let out a long breath. Looking at Sang Zhao, she was scared half to death.
But Sang Zhao was not the type of bad yaoguai who would grab hold of her secret and use it to threaten her.
On the contrary, Sang Zhao clung to her like a drowning man grabbing a stalk of grass, and even kept shoving his head under her hand.
It was as if he truly believed there was some extra magic in An Tihu’s hand, something that could soothe all his anxiety and give this little kitty struggling to pass in human society a huge burst of safety and comfort.
Perfect. Both sides were nervous, and both were convinced the other was the real big shot.
Now that Sang Zhao had ripped off her disguise, and even guessed her exact species, there was nothing left for An Tihu to hide.
She decisively admitted she was a yaoguai.
“Yes, I’m a pelican. You really…” She gave Sang Zhao a complicated once-over. “You’re really very smart.”
Sang Zhao: “?!”
He jolted like a startled cat, jumped back half a step, and stared at An Tihu in pure shock.
Help, he thought, she’s so stressed she’s starting to talk nonsense.
Calling him smart? If that is not nonsense, what is?!
They stared at each other.
The storage room was far from tidy. Dust floated in the air; roll-up banners, display stands, old desktop towers and all sorts of junk were piled everywhere.
In the quiet space, the cat and the bird each had their own thoughts.
An Tihu understood.
Right. Director Li had told her to keep an eye on Sang Zhao, help him get used to human society, work hard, and learn how to “act human.” Ha. Turns out she never needed to bother in the first place.
In An Tihu’s eyes, this so-called Big Demon King had never once needed help.
In just a short time, in less than three weeks at work, he had already managed to “play” with the company president. She had been here for two or three years and had never pulled off something that outrageous.
What kind of workplace Daji persona was this? Was this what “acting human” was supposed to look like? Obviously only a mighty cat could operate at this level.
Up until now, Sang Zhao had only been guessing. This trip here was an experiment, a little test born of a cat’s curiosity.
Guessing was one thing, but having An Tihu come right out and admit it was another.
Now that he had seen her admit it, even though the atmosphere felt a little off, sheer giddy joy still crashed over his cat brain like a wave.
Who would understand?
He was just one small kitty, diligently working as a little assistant on the top floor of a gleaming office building.
He did not know Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. He could not even use pinyin input properly. Even so, he had to keep up a facade of being a reliable corporate drone, sometimes eating, sometimes going hungry, scratching together a paycheck to feed himself.
A yaoguai working a day job was really not easy.
Now that he knew reliable little An-jie was also a yaoguai passing as human, he suddenly felt much, much more at ease.
It took him a moment to catch up, then he asked, “So was it Director Li who told you to keep it from me, jie?”
An Tihu gripped her mug and nodded heavily.
She chose her words carefully and managed to flatter him at the same time. “We didn’t tell you because we were afraid of you. After all, even a big waterbird is afraid of a little kitty.”
Sang Zhao was extremely easy to coax. With one sentence, she had him soothed.
Heh, once he really thought about it, she was right.
No matter how big the bird, it would still be afraid of him, a mighty and powerful orange cat.
Sang Zhao pressed down the smile tugging at his lips, self-consciously scuffed his toes on the floor, and drew two little circles. “Hehe.”
He let out a silly little laugh.
That bad feeling rose up in An Tihu again.
Look at him, she thought, pretending to laugh like a clueless fool. Not only is he “acting human,” but he is “acting dumb.”
She tested the waters. “So how did you know I’m a pelican?”
In Sang Zhao’s mind, this was an incredibly dumb question. How could he not know? But as usual, his naïve side lagged half a beat behind, and his eyes took on the dead-tired look of an overworked office drone.
“Well, I mean, you call yourself Tihu. An Tihu, An-tihu-jie…”
An Tihu made a little noise. “So?”
It was tradition, naming yourself like that. Back in the zoo, she had never had a “human” name. She did not have an owner, could not use the zoo’s name, and did not want to use a name made up by someone at the Yao Bureau. So she had done what most yaoguai did and picked a name built off a homophone for her species.
She had worked very hard on those three characters, agonizing over them, losing sleep, until she finally chose the perfect name.
An, for peace and smooth sailing. Ti, for cleverness and grace. Hu, for skill and capability.
It was a beautiful name. What was wrong with it? Who would not say it sounded good? The meaning was good, the sound was pretty, everything about it was good.
Sang Zhao explained, “Humans avoid picking names that sound like other words, but yaoguai seem to really like homophones.”
Like An Tihu the pelican, and Samoyed Xia Moye.
His own name was not like that at all. Anyone trying to figure out he was a little orange cat from his name was doomed to fail.
But not everyone had a former owner’s name they could borrow.
Someone like An Tihu, who had been in a zoo, had no “owner” name to use, could not use the zoo’s name, and did not want a name made up by Yao Bureau staff, would naturally pick a homophone based on her species, the way most yaoguai did.
Now that their identities were out in the open and the info gap was gone, everything suddenly got much simpler.
Sang Zhao faced An Tihu and started pouring his heart out, treating her like a therapist and a sounding board rolled into one big bird.
“Xiao An-jie, the reason I came to find you is that I’ve been so anxious these last few days. Tell me, if a human finds out we’re yaoguai, are we going to violate some kind of state-secrets thing or confidentiality law and get thrown in jail?”
An Tihu shook her head. “There’s no such law…”
She asked, “Why are you worrying about this all of a sudden? Did you slip up somewhere?”
Sang Zhao’s paranoia was not bad at all.
He did not lead with his own situation. When she asked, he answered with hers instead.
“Me? I’m okay, I guess.” He was guilty, but stubbornly said it anyway.
“But you, Xiao An-jie, you’re not doing so great. That vacation time the boss is forcing on you is proof that something’s off with you.”
An Tihu thought for a moment, then slowly said, “Hm?”
On this topic, Sang Zhao was genuinely curious, so he seized the chance to ask directly, “What kinds of questions were on that psych test? And how did you answer them?”
How on earth had she gotten tagged as having “aggressive tendencies”?
An Tihu tried to remember. “It was a packet, quite a lot of questions. I don’t remember all of them, but I do remember a few interesting ones.”
“For example, there was one that went: ‘Which of the following best describes your position in your mental image of your workplace relationships? A: a follower in a wolf pack; B: a shepherd outside the flock; C: a bird of prey in a flock; D: a flower-bed onlooker.’”
Forget picking an option, Sang Zhao did not even understand the question.
Were all psych tests like this? Complicated and bizarre?
“So what did you pick?” he asked.
An Tihu’s thought process was very straightforward. “Well, I’m a bird, so I picked C.”
Sang Zhao rolled the word around in his head. A predator. A predator of what, exactly? Preying on her coworkers?
An Tihu continued, “There was another one, about how you would handle workplace bullying. I wrote, ‘Let everyone fight as much as they want, no one is going to out-bully me anyway.’”
Sang Zhao’s expression grew a little complicated.
What a thoroughly martial, full-of-fighting-spirit big bird.
“So just because of a psych test, they started suspecting me?” she asked.
“That wasn’t the start,” Sang Zhao told her honestly.
“It started that day it was pouring rain. You didn’t take the elevator, you took the stairs. You went down the stairs upside-down, holding the umbrella in your feet and sprinting with your hands. It was really scary, like a horror movie.”
He added quietly, “Apparently after that day, Tang-zong went home and had nightmares for a whole week.”
An Tihu could not understand at all. Was that really so scary? What was scary about it? She had not exposed a single non-human trait. She had looked human the whole time, so what was frightening about it?
“Seriously…?” she muttered. “Is it that serious?”
Sang Zhao nodded firmly.
Yes, absolutely. When something falls outside the normal range of human behavior, and it is being done by a perfectly calm “human,” it gives people a strange uncanny feeling.
He tried his best to explain. “It’s like… you look like you’re not a person, but you still are a person. That kind of thing feels scary to humans.”
An Tihu was clearly better read. “The uncanny valley. I know.”
Then she grumbled, “But I didn’t fly around the office shedding feathers. I was just walking down the stairs on my hands. Humans can do that too. What’s so scary about it?”
Humans can do it, they just do not usually do it. People humans think are mentally ill might do it. So of course Tang Yu would suspect you were mentally unwell. How could you blame him.
An Tihu let out a pained sigh. “Fine, I get it. I can’t let my guard down.”
“Since I’ve got a full fifteen days of vacation coming up, I’ll go back to the Yao Bureau and retake some of those classes.”
“I promise, from now on I’ll keep my feet from picking things up and my hands from doing the walking.”
After her self-critique, she looked at Sang Zhao and could not help feeling a surge of respect.
Right. She had been a cautious, hard-working city-girl white-collar worker, and she still got flagged by Tang Yu for doing something “weird.”
But Sang Zhao was as steady as a rock.
On the surface he looked like he could not do anything and had bugs everywhere in his performance, yet somehow he had never aroused any real suspicion.
She understood now. True masters always show up as their most authentic selves.
Someone like Sang Zhao, who could not even use pinyin input properly, had never set off Tang Yu’s alarm bells. The more An Tihu thought about it, the more incredible it seemed.
So when Sang Zhao anxiously asked her for advice on “acting human,” and said he really wanted to go out and have fun with Tang Yu but was scared of being exposed, she kept a calm face and stayed quiet.
She gave him no constructive suggestions whatsoever. Instead, she thought to herself, Yes, this is it. Charging into the tiger’s den anyway, that is what high-level, master-tier micromanagement looks like.
This was not a level of “acting human” that someone like her could ever hope to grasp.
Even when she learned, from his rambling, that Sang Zhao did not know pinyin, could not do math, could not use computers, and could not handle chopsticks, she just nodded placidly.
Of course. This was the supreme culmination of the “act human in your most original form” school.
Sang Zhao had no idea what she was nodding about.
Why did she look so sure of herself? What was with that serene air of confidence? He was going to get mad.
Still, they could not stay in the storage room forever.
He was fine. If he skipped work to loaf around, nobody cared. However, An Tihu was the backbone of the secretarial department. The second she disappeared, the phones started shrieking.
The two of them never really got on the same page.
She hurried back to work, and Sang Zhao was left sitting at his desk, a head full of question marks.
…Did Xiao An-jie actually get it or not? Did she understand his humble little plea for a big shot to take pity on him and teach him how to blend in?
Help the noob, carry the cat, save the kitty!
She absolutely did not. In An Tihu’s mind, he had come here to show off his technique.
Unfortunately, Sang Zhao did not know that.
He was still trying to think things through when Tang Yu walked over.
Tang Yu stopped beside his desk and bent down, speaking low beside his ear. “Sang Zhao, didn’t I tell you to stay away from her? Her emotional state is unstable, she’s dangerous.”
Sang Zhao looked up and met Tang Yu’s expression.
Tang Yu’s head dipped slightly; his brows were drawn together, the corners of his mouth turned down. No matter how you looked at it, he seemed unhappy.
Sang Zhao eyed the wine-red shirt Tang Yu was wearing today and felt his own spirits sag.
Dangerous. Xiao An-jie might not be that dangerous, but you, Corn Bean, are very dangerous.
I mean you, Corn Bean. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for a cat when you casually say “you’re a kitty”?
Sitting in his chair, Sang Zhao reached up and caught hold of the hem of Tang Yu’s shirt.
He tugged gently, trying to bluff his way through. “I didn’t. I’m not getting close to her.”
Tang Yu let out a soft little laugh.
He patted Sang Zhao’s shoulder with his fingertips, clearly unconvinced. “I saw the two of you coming out of the storage room one after the other. What was so important that you had to go in there to say it?”
Sang Zhao forced his brain into high gear. He almost ran out of road mentally, but fortunately, he had just parted ways with Xiao An-jie and her “you’re very smart” was still ringing in his ears.
Right. At this moment, every bit of his alleged cleverness seemed to be bubbling up to the surface.
He slammed on the mental brakes, let his gaze flick across the computer on his desk, and came up with an excuse.
“Um, I wanted something to prop my laptop up on, a stand. Xiao An-jie took me to look for one.”
He pointed at the notebook sitting on his desk and complained to Tang Yu, “If I don’t prop it up on a stand, my neck hurts when I look at the screen. But we couldn’t find one.”
Tang Yu’s eyes slid to his neck.
Sang Zhao’s bright orange hair made his skin look even paler, almost translucent, the kind of clear, delicate fairness that made him look especially pretty.
With someone that pretty in front of him, whatever irritation Tang Yu had been holding on to evaporated without a trace.
Even though he knew perfectly well that Sang Zhao never actually looked at the screen.
All Sang Zhao could manage was turning the computer on and off. He played with the mouse like it was a toy ball. His tasks were all odds and ends, and there was never any real need for him to stare at the monitor for long stretches.
Still, even knowing this, Tang Yu looked at him and said, “Come with me.”
He turned and led the way into the president’s office.
Sang Zhao did not have the slightest “Oh no, the boss wants a private talk, I’m doomed” sense of crisis. His nervousness level was practically zero.
He had been way more nervous back when he went to Xia Moye’s parent-teacher meeting and got kept behind by the teacher for a one-on-one talk.
Once he entered the office, he plopped down on the couch and immediately started sliding down the leather, seeing how far he could scoot.
Tang Yu rummaged through a storage cupboard, pulled out an extra laptop stand, and handed it over. “I have a spare. Take this one.”
Hugging the stand, Sang Zhao beamed. “Got it! Long live Tang-zong!”
Tang Yu looked at him, wanting to say something, but hesitating.
He sat down beside Sang Zhao, feeling helpless, but also a little guilty, and decided it was time to reflect on himself.
Thinking about it carefully, he was not much of a boss.
He took Sang Zhao out to eat and play all the time, which meant Sang Zhao was not getting any growth at all from his job. After almost three weeks, nearly a full month, he was still a clueless newbie who got tricked by An Tihu.
This would not do.
Tang Yu thought it over and happily decided he was going to “develop” Sang Zhao.
He would train him, let him gradually become familiar with the work, learn the basics of the industry, broaden his horizons, improve his management skills, push forward on systems building, and turn him into an excellent professional.
But where to start?
Tang Yu fell into deep thought.
He thought and thought, until Sang Zhao had eaten every piece of fruit from the fruit platter on the coffee table, and he still had not come up with anything.
How to put it… There was just too much Sang Zhao did not know. There was nothing he could do. When you wanted to train him, you had no idea where to start, or what work you could possibly assign him.
Tang Yu was starting to panic.
After a while, when Sang Zhao moved on to the packet of mixed nuts on the table, Tang Yu slapped his thigh. “Got it!”
“How about you start with helping host meetings? When clients come, you can sit in and listen. Once you get familiar with things, it will all get easier.”
Sang Zhao: “?”
Will it, though? He could not even use pinyin yet.
Still, he asked, “What does ‘help host meetings’ mean?”
It was just administrative work like pouring tea and refilling water. Nothing hard. Once you got used to it, anyone could do it. The more you did it, the more confident you became.
That was Tang Yu’s thinking.
So he gave Sang Zhao a few hypothetical situations from hosting a meeting and quizzed him.
“Think about it,” Tang Yu said. “If the fruit you’d prepared was cherry tomatoes and grapefruit, and you found out the client was allergic to both, what would you do?”
This one, Sang Zhao knew.
He answered in a second. “Before the client comes into the conference room, I’d hurry up and eat every last one of those evil, sinful fruit plates that made the client allergic and should never have existed in the first place.”
Tang Yu: …
You know, he thought, that is one solution.
The table would look a little bare without fruit, but it did solve the problem thoroughly at the source.
Then Tang Yu pulled out a famous “killer question” from the internet to tease him. “Okay, then. Let’s say there are five executives in the meeting room, but you only have four bottles of water. How do you distribute them?”
Sang Zhao tilted his head and thought.
While he was thinking, Tang Yu just sat there with his brows curved and his gaze soft, eyes never leaving him.
Sure, cats did not have much experience handling office politics. But cats had their own logic.
“Is one of those executives you?” Sang Zhao asked.
“Yes,” Tang Yu answered without thinking.
Sang Zhao did not hesitate. “Then I’d give all four bottles to you.”
Tang Yu covered his forehead for a second.
He looked back up at him, expression complicated, and forced out, “And… and what about the others?”
Who cared about them?
Sang Zhao’s patience was only about as big as a child’s, and not a bit more.
Tang Yu wanted to know what happened to the rest of the executives?
Sang Zhao snorted, utterly unimpressed. “What, if they don’t drink my water, they’re going to die of thirst? That’s way too easy to kill someone.”
Tang Yu: …What kind of logic is that.
He held it in and held it in, until he could not anymore. “Sang Zhao!!”
Pure reflex made Sang Zhao flinch.
Tang Yu’s tone was sharp, but Sang Zhao was not scared at all.
He knew that tone well. Back when he was a pet cat, whenever he ate the chicken bouillon out of the cupboard or pushed the cat tree into the fridge, his owner used exactly that tone.
Scolding the cat. What was there to be afraid of? The owner would never actually abandon him. They always had to coax the cat again after scolding it.
So faced with Tang Yu’s low voice, Sang Zhao just ducked his head a little and looked up through his lashes.
He put on his most pitiful expression. “I just wanted to give all the water to gege. Was that wrong?”
Instantly, what little anger Tang Yu had managed to fake vanished without a trace, like water disappearing into water.
He cleared his throat.
Well, if you thought about it, Sang Zhao was happy right now, wasn’t he?
If he was happy, that was what mattered. He had been at the company for less than three weeks, not even a full month. What was the rush?
Once his thoughts slipped in that direction, Tang Yu could not drag them back.
“Honestly,” he said at last, “you don’t have to learn if you don’t want to.”
Sang Zhao let out a delighted little cheer. “I knew it. You’re the best, gege. You’re so ridiculously good, you’re super, super good.”
The joy Tang Yu could not quite suppress curled up at the corners of his mouth.
Watching Sang Zhao bounce with happiness, he murmured, “Even when you’re complimenting someone, your literary level is not very high…”
Fine. No learning. Everyone was happy.
Tang Yu’s gaze lingered on Sang Zhao, finally settling on that striking, beautiful orange hair.
Every strand of that exquisite orange hair was fluffy and perfect. It was completely uniform, without a single hint of dark roots.
Logically, hair that had been dyed should start to grow out, and after a while you would get that little “pudding head” band at the roots.
Sang Zhao had been at the company nearly three weeks now. That was definitely enough time to grow a bit of black at the roots.
But when Tang Yu looked closely, he could not see even a trace of dark roots in that orange hair. It was still solid gold-orange from root to tip, just like the first day they met.
So he asked, “Do you touch up your roots every week? Won’t dyeing it that often damage your hair?”
Sang Zhao had no idea what he was talking about.
He reflexively echoed, “Touch up? Touch up what?”
Tang Yu gestured. “Your hair. That orange color is really pretty and bright, and it suits you.”
“But you must put a lot of effort into maintaining it, right?” He joked, “You can’t have been born with orange hair, can you?”
Sang Zhao: …I give up. How does Corn Bean always manage to catch the cat by the tail in just a couple of sentences? Is that some kind of superpower?
Help. With such a tiny little gap, and he still manages to find it. Today’s serving of guilt and panic had arrived at last.
Head bowed, Sang Zhao ruffled his own orange hair. All he had time to get out was a muffled little sound. “Mm.”
What was wrong with being born orange.
If you parted his hair and held it up against the light, you could even see the faint tabby stripes layered inside.
A red tabby orange cat, the fashion icon of beautiful fur.
Author’s Note:
The little cat can’t do any meeting-reception work! When clients come to the company for a meeting, there’s no fruit platter because the cat ate it, and no bottled water because the cat gave it all to Corn-Bean, glug glug. There’s nothing left at all. The clients say, “Wow, never seen a company this stingy!”
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