038: Little Cat, You Can Eat Corn Sticky Cake
Tang Yu looked closely and studied it carefully, then still decided this was cat fur.
But this was a hotel suite. The master bedroom of a hotel suite. How could there be cat fur?
If a cat had gotten into the room, Sang Zhao and Xiao Ye would definitely not have secretly played with the cat by themselves. They would’ve yelled for him to come play with the cat together.
Tang Yu was very puzzled. Why hadn’t they called him? Or wait, was this really cat fur?
Maybe it was just some loose thread that happened to look like cat fur?
But he really couldn’t convince himself.
If something looked like cat fur, was shaped like cat fur, felt like cat fur to the touch, and had the same texture as cat fur, then it was cat fur.
What else could it be?
Driven by a feeling he couldn’t quite understand or explain, he pulled out a tissue, carefully wrapped the strand of fur up, folded the tissue a few times, and tucked it into his pocket.
He wasn’t sure what use it would be yet, but he kept it anyway.
The trip back went smoothly, no traffic at all. Tang Yu wanted to send them home, so he asked, “What’s Xiao Ye’s home address? Are his mom and dad coming to pick him up?”
Just now, Sang Zhao and Xia Moye had been bouncing around in the backseat, wiggling and chattering happily. With this one sentence from Tang Yu, both the big one and the small one went quiet.
Xia Moye poked his head into the space between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, secretly exchanging a look with Sang Zhao.
Sang Zhao urgently came up with wording.
“It’s a little late. I just sent his mom a WeChat and told her he’s staying at my place for the night. She’ll come pick him up tomorrow during the day. His mom, I mean, my sister, yes.” Sang Zhao spoke very sincerely.
Tang Yu didn’t overthink it and didn’t ask for an address. After all, he could practically recite the address of Sang Zhao’s apartment in his sleep. He didn’t even need to look at the GPS, just stepped on the gas and sped straight there.
Once they were at the entrance of the apartment building, Tang Yu parked, got out, and helped the two of them move their luggage. Sang Zhao and Xia Moye grabbed their things and said goodbye to Tang Yu.
Ye Ye thought back over this wonderful three-day summer camp. Getting to play so happily with a friend like that, it was all thanks to Tang Yu!
He thanked Tang Yu again, but once he finished saying thank you, it was obvious this dog still had more on his mind.
Ye Ye Dog let out a soft sigh and tugged his little suitcase along, feeling like the whole world was so nice, everything was perfect everywhere.
“This world is just too wonderful,” he sighed from the heart, even spinning in place on the spot.
“Everyone loves me. I love everybody too!”
Sang Zhao watched him, and for a moment his urge to complain shot straight to the max. But when he opened his mouth, he ended up speechless and didn’t say anything.
What a ridiculous dog! His head was like a cotton ball, completely stuffed with cotton candy!
Tang Yu, on the other hand, was really touched. He usually didn’t have much patience with kids. Without a doubt, Xia Moye was the child he’d spent the most patience on. Xia Moye hadn’t let him down either. He had a good temperament and was sensible. The three days they’d spent together had been really fun.
Now that they suddenly had to part, Tang Yu really did feel a little reluctant. He rubbed Xia Moye’s head. “Uncle loves you too.”
Watching them interact, Sang Zhao folded his arms and rubbed his own arm.
Ew, goosebumps. So corny. Only humans and dogs could be this corny with each other!
After saying goodbye, Sang Zhao and Xia Moye stayed where they were, watching as the car zoomed away with a single vroom.
Once they were separated from Tang Yu, only then did Sang Zhao finally let out a full breath.
He pressed his fingers against his temples, slanted a look at Xia Moye, and let out a long sigh. “Ai, finally home! If we’d stayed any longer, I seriously wouldn’t have been able to take it.”
Xia Moye felt he was talking nonsense.
Their cat had been super happy too. Every time the cat team had a contest, he always wanted to grab first place. Tang Yu was so gentle, and this guy still had to jump in. He’d clearly been having a great time!
But even though Ye Ye was thinking that, he didn’t say it out loud.
He leaned over, stuck close to him, and giggled. “But the cat had a lot of fun too. Next time, we should go again. If there’s another event like this, we should go again, right?”
As he spoke, he started showing off what he’d learned at the summer camp, saying “I love you” to Sang Zhao in every language.
Sang Zhao hadn’t attended any of the classes, so all the foreign words were just a blur to him. Still, he could understand “I love you.”
Not to mention, the way Xia Moye spoke, his tone and his voice were sticky and sweet like rice dumpling syrup, making Sang Zhao’s skin crawl.
“Walk, walk, walk!” He hurried Ye Ye along. His expression was serious and his lips were pressed tight, not smiling at all, okay?
Ye Ye got pushed along, stumbling as he dragged his suitcase and pulled the twisty car Tang Yu had given him. He wobbled and bumped the whole way.
Even so, in the elevator, he still had the energy to cling to Sang Zhao and say, “I really love Cat Cat, okay!”
Sang Zhao made a show of trying to kick his butt and chased him out of the elevator.
While the elevator finished the last floor by itself, Sang Zhao rubbed at his flushed face in the mirror.
What love or not love, hmph! Only little dogs were this shameless!
—
After a good rest, the next time he dragged himself out of bed, it wasn’t Tang Yu’s steady knocking that woke him up.
It was his alarm, screeching and squawking for Sang Zhao to get up.
Sang Zhao sat on the bed, holding his phone, staring at the evil date on the screen.
【Monday】
Ugh. Monday was really awful. It made little cats get up and go to work.
He got up, washed, got dressed, took the subway, bought a jianbing guozi at the subway entrance, and trudged off to work.
Once he got to the office, he was greeted by even worse news.
An Tihu was on annual leave!
She really, really took time off!
Earlier, Sang Zhao had been laughing at An Tihu for getting caught and arousing Tang Yu’s suspicions so badly she had no choice but to go on leave. Now, her leave had officially begun.
The bird was on vacation. The cat was at work. This world wasn’t just heartless, it made no sense at all!
Sang Zhao had no choice but to take over some of An Tihu’s work, going around to each department to collect forms and so on. He could handle that kind of task, and it let him wander around, which was more interesting.
He set off, strolled around the finance department, then went to HR and marketing.
By that point, he’d already collected a whole stack of forms.
Standing in the marketing department’s break room, he counted the forms to see how many he had.
He was counting two, four, six, eight, and every time he messed up he had to start over again. While he was doing that, he heard voices outside the door.
Sang Zhao was a cat. His hearing was extremely sharp.
He hadn’t meant to listen in, but the sound kept drilling into his ears. With all that noise nearby, and his counting ability being average at best, the slightest distraction made him lose track.
He was holding a stack of forms. He’d already started over several times, counted over and over again, yet he still had no idea how many sheets he was holding.
Staring at the forms, he got annoyed. Forget counting!
All right, all right, who was talking out there!? Since he wasn’t counting anymore, he was going to full-on eavesdrop!
Now he listened carefully. Outside, people were chatting away, very excited.
Even though he’d only caught the middle of the conversation and missed the start, it still carried quite a lot of information.
“He really is so good-looking, right? I told you! It was worth coming up with an excuse to go to the secretary’s office just to see him!”
“Right? That little connection hire didn’t have an interview, he barely filled in any paperwork, and he clearly doesn’t really know how to use a computer. Can you believe it? So young and he doesn’t know how to use a computer, and at noon he just naps on the keyboard!”
“But honestly, it’s not that bad. A connection hire is a connection hire. He’s still better than the connection hires at my old company. One of those guys called me at one in the morning and told me to drive him out to go fishing. That bastard, I really wanted to use the hook to tear his nasty mouth open.”
…
After that it was just more complaining.
Listening in, Sang Zhao was really enjoying the gossip.
Even though he couldn’t see anything and could only listen, and strictly speaking that didn’t count as “watching” the show, he still listened with great interest, tearing open a bag of snacks in the break room.
He took a couple of bites. Not bad. He glanced down. Mimi Shrimp Sticks.
Munching on snacks and listening to gossip, Sang Zhao thought this was pretty fun.
But he still hadn’t figured out who they were talking about. By the time his blood was pumping and he really wanted to rush in and join them, chiming in with “exactly, exactly,” “how could they,” and “that’s so over the line,” he pushed the door open and walked straight into everyone’s line of sight.
What greeted him wasn’t a casual hello, but complete silence.
Sang Zhao wasn’t familiar with human society, but he wasn’t actually dumb.
Back when he was a cat, sneaking freeze-dried treats out of the cupboard and roast duck slices out of the kitchen at midnight, he’d been lookout, patrol, action, and logistics all by himself. One cat was an entire team.
He was sharp and sensitive.
So at first glance, he knew something was off.
What was with those expressions? Why did they all look like they’d just been caught red-handed?
Sang Zhao: …They weren’t talking about me, were they?
This was his first time running into the legendary workplace hellscape of overhearing his coworkers badmouthing him behind his back and walking right in on it. So this was what people called “social death.”
But honestly, he didn’t really socially die. He felt perfectly justified, face unchanged, and ran. Hugging the stack of forms, he bolted back to his desk, plopped down, and started thinking.
It seemed like he’d caught them talking about him. But when he replayed what they’d said, it actually wasn’t that mean.
Saying he didn’t know how to use a computer, that was true. Saying he hadn’t had an interview, also true. Saying he was good-looking, well that was even more true!
The only thing was, he’d overheard them calling him a “connection hire.” What was a connection hire?
Was “connection hire” a bad word?
Sang Zhao didn’t know, but he wasn’t the clueless little cat who’d just entered human society anymore. He was smarter now and more experienced with dealing with things.
When he ran into something he didn’t understand, there was no need to guess blindly. He smoothly pulled out his phone, opened Baidu, and started searching.
Sang Zhao typed slow and clumsy. He knew his spelling was terrible, but he believed in Baidu’s autocomplete.
Maybe Baidu was smarter than him. At least Baidu might know what “connection hire” meant.
He typed and asked Baidu:
【connecsin hiyer wats dat】
Baidu didn’t give him anything useful back. On the blank page, a bunch of sites about light spectrums popped up, which confused him even more.
Luckily, his input method knew him pretty well. It automatically guessed what he meant and corrected it to “guanxihu (connection hire).”
Sang Zhao finally got the right characters and pulled up the explanation he wanted.
He read the text slowly, and whenever he didn’t recognize a character, he tapped the audio button and listened in a small voice. After a while, he understood.
Oh, so it meant that, because Tang Yu was his acquaintance, he’d taken advantage of Tang Yu.
Tang Yu was his acquaintance, and he was Tang Yu’s familiar cat. Of course that was obvious, Sang Zhao thought.
He didn’t think this word was an insult to a little cat. Just like him not knowing how to use a computer, not having an interview, and being good-looking, it was all just the plain truth.
Once he finished looking it up, he felt totally justified. Yes, he was a connection hire!
By the time someone from marketing nervously came over, dragging their social-death courage along to apologize, he was already completely unbothered.
Facing the anxious coworker, Sang Zhao answered with certainty, “I am. You’re right.”
After cheerfully saying that, he swayed off toward the president’s office under his coworker’s stunned stare.
Humph, the connection hire was going to order lunch for the big boss!
Sang Zhao knocked and went in, happily asking, “Tang Zong, what do you want for lunch? I’ll order for you!”
Tang Yu moved his eyes away from the spreadsheet on his screen and glanced at him. “You’ve taken over ordering lunch for me now?”
Sang Zhao nodded. Tang Yu smiled softly. For something this small, he still had to praise him. “Very capable, aren’t you?”
Praising him wasn’t enough. He also had to ask. Ask who? Ask Sang Zhao? What would Sang Zhao know about whether he was capable or not?
So he walked over and waited for Tang Yu to tell him what he wanted to eat.
Sang Zhao came closer, standing a little nearer to Tang Yu.
Sitting in his ergonomic chair, Tang Yu leaned back a little and calmly lifted his gaze to look at him.
The most eye-catching thing on Sang Zhao was that little head of orange fur, bright and impossible to ignore, like a fluffy orange or a very enthusiastic sun.
Because of that, Tang Yu tended to overlook the rest a bit. Only now, when he looked carefully, forcing himself to stay calm while he met Sang Zhao’s eyes, did he realize that…
Sang Zhao’s eyes weren’t the usual black. They were a light copper brown. There was a hint of wildness in them, and together with his straight, upright posture, he looked like a hunter coming back to the tribe with a wild ox on his shoulders.
…Hold on. Tang Yu realized his thoughts were drifting.
Because Sang Zhao was five years younger than him, he always looked at him like a kid. Even when he’d just picked up a faint sense of danger and aggression in those eyes, he didn’t take it seriously. Instead, he happily thought that “copper brown” didn’t sound nice.
Those were clearly caramel-amber eyes.
Really pretty. The longer Tang Yu looked, the more he thought so.
After a moment of standing there, Sang Zhao realized that not only had Tang Yu not said what he wanted to eat, he’d even started zoning out.
Sang Zhao: ??
What was this? How could he drift off right in front of him? Did that mean the little cat and the air were the same, both easy to ignore? How could his Corn Bean be like this?
He deliberately gave a loud cough, pulling Tang Yu’s attention back.
Tang Yu finally came back to his senses and reacted, slowly letting out an “ah.” “Ah, then I’ll just have whatever you’re having.”
He didn’t even say he’d open the group chat and look at the menu or anything. He just casually decided like that.
That left the enthusiastic assistant with an unsatisfied itch. His dream of getting “stumped by the boss on lunch, then racking his brains and finally solving it” as an assistant had ended before it began.
Corn Bean was too kind, Sang Zhao thought.
After lunch, in the afternoon, a coworker handed him the job of booking train tickets.
The secretary’s office had to book high-speed rail tickets for Tang Yu and a few others. He was going to Beijing for work.
This business trip wasn’t like the last external event with the tea-break reception. This time it was important. Tang Yu didn’t bring Sang Zhao along to play. He brought the vice president and the head of the secretary’s office.
To buy their tickets, Sang Zhao had to use their ID numbers.
He knew how to do that. He’d learned it back at the Yao Bureau. Luckily he had, or his “pretending to be human” career would’ve hit another crisis.
That was the annoying part of a cat pretending to be a person in human society. Humans could do way too many things. You knew how to do this but not that, and over some little detail you’d arouse human suspicion again.
Fortunately, today too, it looked like he’d manage to bluff his way through, hehe.
He counted out Tang Yu’s ID number as he bought the ticket. Looking at the sequence of digits, he suddenly remembered a basic piece of human common knowledge he’d learned at the Yao Bureau.
The 11th and 12th digits of the ID number were the birth month. The 13th and 14th were the birthday. That way, you could tell someone’s birthday just by looking…
He checked the ID number, then looked at the calendar, then went back to the ID number, and finally confirmed something.
Next week was Tang Yu’s birthday.
Nice. A human had grown one year older, become a one-year-older human, and had made it safely through another year of his life.
Once he knew that, Sang Zhao kept thinking about it.
Back when he’d been a pet cat, his owners had always celebrated his birthday. The date itself wasn’t actually the day he was born. They used the day they’d picked him up as his birthday, but every year, they celebrated it anyway.
He’d had little cakes made out of canned food, cat sticks, and kibble. He’d had birthday hats, a new cat tree as a birthday present, and a whole bunch of other things.
Having a birthday, getting presents, made him really feel that he was loved.
So birthdays were a great thing!
Now it was Tang Yu’s birthday. As far as Sang Zhao was concerned, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. Tang Yu was his leader, his boss, and also his first human friend.
Even as a cat, he had to care about loyalty. If a friend was having a birthday, he couldn’t show up empty-handed. He had to give a gift.
But what should he give? Tang Yu was a big boss. It wasn’t like he lacked anything.
If he was going to give Tang Yu a present, what should he give? Sang Zhao kept thinking about it.
After work, he went downstairs to find Xia Moye and solemnly handed Ye Ye a comb.
Ye Ye took it, looked it over, and had no idea what medicine he was selling in this gourd.
“What’s this for?” he asked curiously. “Why are you giving this to me?”
Sang Zhao was a bit embarrassed, but he still spoke up.
“Mm… I want to ask you to help me brush my fur.”
Xia Moye: “Huh?!”
He jumped, then immediately got excited and started circling around him.
“Is it for brushing the little cat’s fur? Oh my god, Ye Ye gets to brush the little cat’s fur? Wulaaa!”
A dog brushing a cat’s fur. The little dog was proud! The little dog had a big mission!
Rubbing at his own face, Sang Zhao still felt a little shy and secretly shot Ye Ye a glare. Then he lowered his eyes, a bit bashful, and finally said what he was really after.
“Corn Bean’s going to have his birthday, and I don’t know what to give him. So I wanted to ask you to brush me every day for a while,” Sang Zhao said. “We can use the fur you brush out to make a cat-fur needle-felting doll.”
He’d seen that kind of thing on his phone when he was scrolling short videos, so he knew. Needle-felting meant stabbing a ball of fur over and over until it turned into a fat little fluffy puffball.
He was going to give it to Tang Yu as a birthday present.
A cat-fur needle-felting doll wasn’t just cute. Also…
“We’re yaoguai. We’ve cultivated a bit, but not much. Still, with how much fur we have, we can at least bless him with a little extra safety and health. Isn’t that perfect?”
“For humans, being safe and healthy is the most important thing, right?” Sang Zhao said.
As soon as he put it like that, Samoyed Ye Ye was moved too. He liked Tang Yu as well and wanted to do something. But just as he opened his mouth to suggest something, the orange-cat version of Sang Zhao kicked him.
“Don’t steal my idea! Bad dog!” Sang Zhao scolded. “Go think of your own present!”
Ye Ye couldn’t think of anything. So he brushed Sang Zhao’s fur while thinking hard.
And that brushing went on for a whole week. With Tang Yu’s birthday just around the corner, Sang Zhao was getting anxious, but Tang Yu still wasn’t back from his business trip.
After asking around, he heard that something unexpected had happened with the deal in Beijing, so Tang Yu’s group had to stay there a bit longer.
“I see.”
Sang Zhao nodded, went back to his desk, and stared blankly at a Word document.
He’d been pretending to be human for a month now. For three of those weeks, he’d practically been glued to Tang Yu, even seeing him on weekends.
Now, they hadn’t seen each other for a week. Of course he felt unsettled.
Clearly, Tang Yu felt the same way.
The WeChat messages he sent hadn’t stopped. Because he was worried about making Sang Zhao read too much, they were all voice messages.
When the notification chime sounded, Sang Zhao tapped into WeChat and saw that Tang Yu had sent him several photos and a voice message.
Listening to it, he found out Tang Yu was asking him to pick desserts. He wanted to bring some treats back for him.
But Sang Zhao didn’t actually want to eat the desserts in those photos.
He’d already collected plenty of fur, and by following online tutorial videos, his needle-felting had started to sort of resemble something. At this point, the only thing on his mind was when Tang Yu would come home.
Still, Tang Yu wasn’t his owner. Sang Zhao thought he couldn’t treat Tang Yu the way he’d treated his owner, yowling at the top of his lungs if he went a few days without seeing him.
Thinking that made the little cat feel even more wronged.
He flipped through the pictures, but nothing looked appetizing.
A cat this gluttonous, and even he could reach a point where he had no appetite.
Was Corn Bean the kind of evil Corn Bean who went out hunting and left the cat behind?
He pressed his thumb on the voice-message button on the screen and spoke listlessly, sounding very down. “I want corn sticky cake.”
Tang Yu looked around. None of the traditional pastry shops nearby sold anything like corn sticky cake.
He told him there wasn’t any and told him to pick something else. But once Sang Zhao’s stubborn streak flared up, he insisted there was. He refused to choose from the photos and refused to eat anything else. He just wanted corn sticky cake.
Helpless, Tang Yu tapped on Sang Zhao’s little cat-paw avatar, using WeChat’s “poke” function to poke the sulking Sang Zhao sitting at his desk far away in Beijing.
Actually, it wasn’t that Sang Zhao particularly wanted to eat corn sticky cake. He just missed Corn Bean.
Not the corn in the corn sticky cake, but this Corn Bean called Tang Yu.
They clearly had corn sticky cake, but they just wouldn’t let the cat eat it.
Staring down at his phone, in a bad mood, Sang Zhao thought, it was just like clearly having Corn Bean, but not coming home.
Was work really that fun? So annoying. Humans were all bad guys.
Scratching his chin, he looked out the window, fuming to himself.
Author’s Note:
Tang Yu: “Why do we work so hard to make money?”
To spend it on the cat! To spend it on the cat! At work we’re beasts of burden, after work we…
Hahaha, Juan Juan only just came across this song today. It’s super catchy. I’ve had it on repeat~
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