045: Because I Like You
Sang Zhao stared at the person at the door.
He looked very carefully, and when he was done looking, he looked again.
His brain was running slow, and he felt a little dull. He had to stare at the person in front of him for quite a while before he could understand anything at all.
His eyes figured it out first, but his brain didn’t.
Only after his brain processed things for a bit did it finally connect the person in front of him with the Corn Bean in his head.
“Mm.” He let out a low sound in his throat, shook his head a little, and kept staring at Tang Yu.
Seeing him like this, Tang Yu felt there was no way to have a normal conversation. He braced a hand on the door, pulled it open, slipped inside, and shut it behind him.
In a daze, Sang Zhao went, “Eh, Corn Bean’s at my place.”
Tang Yu thought, Oh, fantastic. To my face it’s all ‘gege,’ but behind my back you secretly call me Corn Bean.
Corn was bad enough, but Corn Bean?
Giving your boss a nickname like Corn Bean…
But seeing how sick he looked, Tang Yu didn’t bother thinking about corn or beans anymore.
He looked down and noticed that Sang Zhao was barefoot.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked.
“Upstairs,” Sang Zhao replied.
“Why’d you come down to open the door without shoes?”
Tang Yu quickly pulled him back upstairs.
The loft’s second floor was just a small bedroom, basically only a bed and a wardrobe. Tang Yu pressed him back down onto the bed.
Once he lay down, Sang Zhao closed his eyes and made two uncomfortable little sounds.
Tang Yu crouched by the bed and pressed the back of his hand to Sang Zhao’s forehead to feel his temperature.
It was scorching hot, like you could roast sweet potatoes on it.
“How high is it?” Tang Yu blurted.
Half out of it, Sang Zhao mumbled, “Me? I can only drink stuff in the tens. If it’s hotter than that, I can’t drink it.”
“…I’m asking what your fever is,” Tang Yu said stiffly.
Sang Zhao looked left, looked right, then said, “Hehe, Corn Bean.”
Tang Yu let out a long breath. He was both frustrated and worried, but his face twisted into an incredulous smile anyway.
He frowned, leaned over, and patted his cheek lightly to bring his awareness back. “Where’s your thermometer?”
Still lying there, he rolled halfway over, thought for a moment, then said, “Don’t have one.”
Mumbling under his breath, he added, “Don’t have that, never bought one, can’t afford one. Every little bit of money has to be eaten. Hehe.”
Tang Yu seemed to choke on that and didn’t say anything for a while.
Seeing how muddled he was, Tang Yu regretted dragging him back to bed.
If he’d known it was this bad, he should’ve taken him straight downstairs, into the car, and right to the hospital for an IV drip.
Now that they were upstairs, going back out would be more trouble and would only make him suffer more.
In Tang Yu’s mind, of course they needed to go to the hospital. Let a doctor take a look and either prescribe medicine or put him on an IV. No matter what, it would be better than lying around at home.
But as soon as the hospital idea even started to form, Sang Zhao visibly started to balk, flatly refusing no matter what Tang Yu said.
When Tang Yu asked why, he hemmed and hawed and couldn’t give a clear answer.
He just reflexively argued back on instinct, and no matter what, he wouldn’t go.
Since he couldn’t explain it, Tang Yu was even more determined to drag him to the hospital.
That panicked him, and with his fevered brain not catching up, he blurted out, “I don’t like vets.”
Tang Yu frowned. “What kind of thing is that to say? Why would I take you to a vet?”
He took a long breath. “Is that really how bad I look in your eyes?”
Oh, not a vet, Sang Zhao thought dully, but that still won’t do.
He couldn’t go to the hospital at all. Not a vet, not a human hospital.
All the machines in hospitals were so powerful. What if they scanned something weird when they scanned him? Or if they took his blood, that would be even worse.
What would he do if they found out he was a cat? He hadn’t had nearly enough time pretending to be human.
Tang Yu grabbed him again. “You need an IV like this. You can’t just refuse treatment. You…”
“I won’t, I won’t,” he said.
Tang Yu was no match for his strength.
He was all real muscle, a sturdy, powerful little orange cat.
He put a bit of force into it, rolled across the bed, and Tang Yu, half-squatting there, staggered.
Without the bedside table to brace himself on, he would’ve gone face-first onto the mattress.
He really couldn’t haul him anywhere, and he definitely couldn’t carry him out.
He had no choice but to stay and take care of him.
Only once he saw that Tang Yu wasn’t going to take him to a hospital did Sang Zhao relax.
Not long after that, he drifted off.
To say he had “fallen asleep” was a bit generous. It was more like he fainted.
While he was out, Tang Yu started rushing around.
He went downstairs to find an electric kettle to boil some hot water.
Naturally, he didn’t just boil water. While it heated, he pulled out his phone and started ordering delivery.
Because it wasn’t just thermometers and medicine that he was missing.
His fridge was empty too.
Tang Yu opened it and saw nothing but a pile of frozen pizza, dumplings, and similar stuff stuffed into the freezer. Everything else was barren.
The produce drawer didn’t have a single fruit or vegetable.
So he ordered a thermometer and some common medicine, then an on-demand grocery delivery with some vegetables, eggs, and hand-pulled noodles.
He also ordered fruit delivery and bought a big honeydew melon.
Once the water had boiled, he went hunting for a cup and filled one for him, then took it upstairs.
Sang Zhao had just fallen asleep when he got dragged back up out of it.
And right now, when his body felt so awful, he wasn’t in the mood to be cooperative about anything.
He was completely ignoring human speech and just whining.
“Drink a little hot water and stay under the blankets,” Tang Yu told him. “If you sweat a bit, you’ll feel better.”
He wouldn’t drink.
In his mind, this wasn’t being difficult, it was logical.
He really felt like he had the facts on his side.
“I drink hot water, my tongue hurts,” he said, aggrieved.
Tang Yu did know that. He knew Sang Zhao had a cat’s tongue and that drinking hot water would feel uncomfortable.
But he was sick and running a fever. If he didn’t drink something warm and sweat it out, he’d feel even worse later.
“Blow on it and sip it slowly, okay?” Tang Yu held the cup to his lips.
When he’d been a cat, he hadn’t liked drinking water at all. What was water? Poison.
Who would drink that for no reason?
Now that he was human, his options were much broader. Only an idiot would choose water.
“I don’t want water,” he said. “I want Coke.”
Left with no choice, Tang Yu set the cup aside and let it cool to warm before trying again.
He went back downstairs to get a towel, soaked it in hot water, wrung it out, and carried it back up.
He wiped his face with the warm towel, then laid it over his forehead.
The sudden attack of a hot towel made him yowl, sharp and explosive.
“Aaaooow!”
“Easy, easy,” Tang Yu soothed him. “Just wiping, just wiping.”
If he wasn’t going to the hospital, then he needed to rest properly at home.
Get properly warm, sleep properly, then see how things looked when he woke up.
If it still wasn’t any better, Tang Yu would take him to the hospital whether he wanted to go or not.
Once he’d settled him again, Tang Yu went to look for the cat.
He remembered that Sang Zhao had a cat, and if he was sick enough to miss work, he probably hadn’t fed it.
Tang Yu did want to feed the cat.
He found the kibble and freeze-dried, but not a bowl or the cat itself.
Standing in the middle of the living room, he was puzzled.
Where’s the cat, he thought.
He checked all over, with one eye always on the time and an ear cocked for sounds upstairs.
Every so often, he snuck up to check on Sang Zhao, then crept back down to continue searching.
He never saw so much as a whisker.
Still, since Sang Zhao had said the cat was afraid of people, he figured maybe it was hiding from him.
When he really couldn’t find it, he gave up.
He also figured that if he hadn’t fed the cat, he likely hadn’t cleaned the litter box either.
So he went to find the litter box.
There wasn’t one.
This was getting strange.
Right then, the deliveries arrived one after another.
He went to bring them up and took his temperature.
Helping him sit up against the headboard, he said, “Come on.”
He checked the thermometer.
Thirty-eight point nine, right at the edge of thirty-nine.
Could be worse. He really was running a fever, but it wasn’t catastrophic.
Figuring he must not have eaten, Tang Yu went to cook him a bowl of hot noodle soup.
Normally, he didn’t like hot noodles, especially soup noodles.
They didn’t have much flavor, and he hated them.
But Tang Yu’s were different.
Instead of cracking an egg straight into the pot and poaching it whole, he stirred the soup into a little whirlpool and then cracked the egg into the vortex.
That way, the egg puffed up, with frilly whites and a very tender texture.
While the noodles were boiling, he cracked another egg, whisked it, then poured it in slowly.
All the noodles ended up coated in bits of egg.
Originally, Sang Zhao was only willing to take a bite because it was from Corn Bean.
But after one bite came another, and then another right after that.
In no time at all, the bowl was empty.
“It’s so good,” he said reverently.
Tang Yu, still sitting on the edge of the bed, watched him chow down.
Even sick, he was eating with frightening efficiency.
He really was ill, but he was still just as powerful when it came to food, tearing through it like a beast.
Tang Yu was a little amazed by how lively he could be while sick.
It was funny, in a way.
He paused for a moment, gathered his words, then said, “If you can eat, that means it’s not too serious. You’ll get better soon.”
“‘Can eat’” didn’t begin to cover it.
He didn’t just eat what was in the bowl.
He cleaned out the bit still left in the pot.
After another nap and a full meal, he felt much better.
Clutching the pot, his eyes gradually cleared, and he grinned at Tang Yu.
“Wow, hot soup noodles are actually this good,” he said, still savoring the taste.
Seeing his energy return, Tang Yu stayed to chat and pass the time until he could take his medicine.
“When I first graduated and was starting the company, I was really broke,” he said. “I couldn’t even afford instant noodles, so I bought this stuff by the kilo. I didn’t know how to make fancy sauces, just boiled them plain.”
Very gently, he brushed his fingers over his forehead and felt a light layer of sweat.
That bowl of hot noodles had done its job.
Seeing how much more comfortable he looked now, he nodded, satisfied, and kept talking.
“When you boil them often enough, you figure out how to make them taste good.”
“You’re amazing,” Sang Zhao said honestly.
Tang Yu wiped his face again with the towel.
After a while, he brought the medicine over.
He also cut half the melon, put the other half in the fridge, and carried out a plate of sliced fruit.
“Eating honeydew feels the best when you have a fever,” he said. “I remember you really like melons, right?”
Obediently, he took his medicine, then started crunching through the melon slices, but he refused to go back to sleep.
Tang Yu insisted that he had to nap again.
He lay there with his eyes closed, tossing and turning, completely unable to sleep.
“Let’s talk some more,” he whispered.
Tang Yu laughed. “What’s this, you want me to lull you to sleep?”
Lying there, his eyes were shining, like all the starlight in the sky had fallen into a single gaze.
Staring at the man sitting by his bed, he said softly, “Gege.”
The word was light, but it carried so much weight.
Tang Yu’s heart thudded against his ribs.
He forced himself to keep a straight face, just humming once. “Not calling me Corn Bean anymore?”
He tilted his head slightly and gave him a secret little blink.
Now that he’d been caught giving him a nickname, he wasn’t flustered at all.
What was wrong with naming him? It wasn’t like he was calling him something terrible, like Black Panther calling his boss “savage man.”
His nickname was adorable.
And he had a perfectly upright explanation too.
“Because you’re like corn,” he said solemnly, “you’re a great staple food.”
He had his own logic, his own way of thinking, and a very particular kind of cuteness when he spoke.
“Look, corn kernels are sweet and fresh and yellow,” he said happily.
He meant they were a light, pretty yellow, but when he said “yellow yellow,” Tang Yu’s expression got complicated.
“I don’t think I’m like that,” he muttered.
But Sang Zhao really liked him.
“Gege, let me call you that, okay? There are so many people in the world, and animals too, and I’m the only one who calls you this. Isn’t that so cool?”
Cool? In what way.
He didn’t know where the cool part was, but he silently rolled the name around in his head.
Corn Bean.
Even the nickname he’d made up was as cute as he was.
Tang Yu accepted the name and then, putting on a serious air, brought up something he’d ignored in his rush and only remembered afterward.
“Where you live isn’t safe,” he said. “On my way here I met several people just hanging around on a weekday, looking totally idle.”
“And there was a guy sitting shirtless in the lobby. Do you even have 24-hour security in this building? It doesn’t feel very safe to me.”
That made him guilty.
He fumbled and changed the subject.
The monsters were weird, sure, but unsafe?
There was nowhere safer than this.
If a thief broke in, he’d be robbing a whole building full of monsters.
He wouldn’t even make it to the valuables before being scared to death.
Seeing him dodge the topic, Tang Yu let it go and moved on.
“Right, where’s your cat?”
“You didn’t feed it this morning, did you? I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Where’s it hiding?”
He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head.
A moment ago, he’d been eager to chat with Tang Yu.
Now he didn’t want to talk at all.
From under the covers came a muffled complaint.
“Stop talking, you haven’t said a single thing I want to hear. I’m going to sleep.”
–
When he finally woke again, he was hungry.
Being sick, he couldn’t handle being hungry for long.
He dove into his spiritual sea and found the freeze-dried cat treats his earlier client had given him.
He pulled them out, held them in one hand, and started popping them into his mouth.
His head was foggy and his body exhausted.
He ate and got out of bed at the same time, shuffling around upstairs in his slippers, sick and wobbly.
Sniffing the air, he followed the smell downstairs to the kitchen, where he spotted Tang Yu, still there.
“You’re awake,” Tang Yu said. “Hungry?”
He was wearing an apron that had clearly never been used before, and he was cooking a pot of fragrant congee.
“It’ll be ready soon. What are you eating?”
Normally, Sang Zhao reacted fast, but this time he was still in a sick, slow mode.
He should have hurried to swallow what was in his hands and come up with a cover story.
But he was slower than usual and just stood there, frozen, as Tang Yu leaned over to see what he was eating.
“You’re eating… you, you…” Tang Yu was stunned.
His voice jumped in disbelief. “You’re eating cat food?”
“Freeze-dried cat treats,” he said weakly.
Seeing Tang Yu’s face darken, he quickly changed tack. “Or, um, cat food works too. That’s fine.”
To keep him from suspecting he was actually a cat, he needed an excuse, fast.
Think. Quickly. Brain, move. Hurry up and think of a good human reason for eating cat food.
Right, that line from before.
“I have a cat, so…” he said, “before I feed it, I taste a little.”
“Are you feeding a cat right now?” Tang Yu shot back. “Where is it?”
“…Mm.”
“And that’s ‘tasting a little’? You’re shoving it down by the handful,” Tang Yu added, frowning as he snatched the remaining treats from his hand.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “What’s really going on?”
Scratching his head, he thought about everything Tang Yu had done.
The medicine, the noodles, helping him sweat out his fever.
He really was touched.
He didn’t want to be a little cat who lied about everything from beginning to end.
So he told the truth.
“Because if I keep ordering takeout, I don’t have enough money,” he said. “I don’t know how to cook, and eating cat food is just right.”
That was the truth, without a single lie mixed in.
Within what he felt he could say, that was the truest answer he could give him.
Tang Yu’s brain went entirely blank.
All at once, his mind filled with an image of Sang Zhao starving, desperate, crouched in a corner stuffing cat food into his mouth by the handful.
It was so miserable, and the logic was so wrong.
Nothing but takeout or cat food.
Still, it was miserable.
The more he thought about it, the more his chest hurt.
He stared at his hand, then slowly wrapped his fingers around his.
He didn’t speak for a long time, his head bowed, and it was obvious he was choking up.
“You’re crying,” Sang Zhao said quietly.
Oh no, he was crying.
That made him even more guilty and ashamed.
He’d made his kind Corn Bean cry.
He was such a sinful little cat.
Panicking, he rushed to make it better, terrified Tang Yu would do something drastic.
“I’m not short on money,” he said. “I mainly, um, like eating it. Don’t, don’t give me a raise. Really.”
“I’m not good at my job. If I get a raise, that’s not fair to the other coworkers. I don’t like things that aren’t fair.”
Tang Yu still didn’t speak.
He just stood there quietly, refusing to answer.
After a long silence, he finally raised his head, looking into his eyes, his lashes trembling.
“Don’t do things like eating cat food anymore,” he said. “It hurts you, and it hurts me too, okay?”
Ugh, thought Sang Zhao. That’s really hard to explain. I’m a little cat.
Eating cat food didn’t hurt him at all.
So don’t be sad, Corn Bean. Don’t scrunch your face up like that, Corn Bean.
The air around Tang Yu dropped to freezing.
He’d never seen him look so defeated before.
Even his breathing sounded heavy.
He was that low and still clinging to his hand, like he was suppressing something big and trying not to explode.
Feeling guilty, he instinctively leaned into being coddled, trying to use his usual cuddly routine as a shortcut to fix everything.
Normally, Tang Yu was a pushover when it came to him, but not now.
No matter how he tugged on his wrist and coaxed, Tang Yu’s expression didn’t budge.
His gaze dropped, and even the tiny puff of hair tied at the nape of his neck looked stern.
When he finally spoke again, the first thing out of his mouth was, “You really don’t know how to take care of yourself. This won’t work.”
That conclusion delivered, he still wasn’t done.
Everything he’d been holding back was clearly about to come out.
Looking at the anxious expression on Sang Zhao’s face, he made a clean, decisive call.
“Move,” he said. “Come live with me.”
His jaw dropped slowly.
Half a beat late, he let out a quiet, “Uh?”
“What ‘uh’?” Tang Yu gave him a look. “Look at yourself. Does this seem okay to you? Eating cat food, eating freeze-dried…”
“Sang Zhao, how could you not get sick, taking care of yourself like this?”
Because I’m not a person at all, he thought.
Orange cats eating cat food and freeze-dried was perfectly normal.
That was the way of the world, like it had been since ancient times.
He actually felt he had the moral high ground and started getting contrary.
If he pushed him any harder, he would genuinely get upset.
But being Tang Yu, he knew exactly how to go with the grain of his temper.
He wasn’t even trying, really, and he still managed to deflate him.
Right then, he stopped pressing and chose that moment to confess.
A few days ago, he’d been getting called “mom.”
Just now, he’d cooked noodles and cut melon for him like a mom, nursing him through a fever.
Now he was confessing.
Tang Yu rubbed the back of his hand softly.
“Because I like you,” he said. “I can’t stand seeing you put upon.”
“Can you understand where I’m coming from? Seeing you take care of yourself like this, I can’t help getting mad at you.”
He sighed and shook his head helplessly.
“But more than being mad at you, I think… I’m mad at myself. I feel really guilty, Sang Zhao.”
“Even if you don’t like me, I already treat you as my responsibility. I’m sorry, that’s presumptuous, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
He pulled his hand back, picked up a piece of melon from the counter, and took a bite.
He gnawed on it a couple times, chewed a few more, then looked up at him.
He didn’t say anything, just threw himself into thinking as hard as he could.
Tang Yu lowered his voice again.
“Please let me like you,” he said. “And please accept my feelings.”
He softened for a second, then went hard again almost immediately.
“So move in with me,” he said.
Finishing his melon, he felt like the food had oiled the gears in his head.
So it really had been a courtship.
Since he’d said all that, what was there to be afraid of?
No matter what happened later, every thought in his little cat brain right now was saying yes.
So he was going to say yes.
He just didn’t want to move into Tang Yu’s place.
“These are two different things,” he said. “Let me think. Oh, right. Of course I want to do the whole gay thing with you.”
“…Ah,” Tang Yu said.
So direct.
Just coming right out and saying “do the whole gay thing,” so blunt and straightforward.
But he was still dizzy with happiness.
That honest, blazing, decisive little cat barreling toward him made his heart go soft.
Even while he was angry, he couldn’t keep the corners of his lips from lifting.
For a second, he even thought, Why am I mad again?
Wasn’t it just cat food? It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it.
If he liked it that much, he could buy him all he wanted.
No. No. That wasn’t sanitary.
He couldn’t just go along with the weird logic of a silly kid like that.
He kept staring at him, muttering, “So you agreed?”
He wasn’t fooled.
“I agreed to the first part,” he said. “Not the second. I can’t move in with you. I have my own home.”
He really didn’t want to move.
He wasn’t paying rent, and his utilities and internet were all free.
Why would he stop milking the Yao Management Bureau and go spend Corn Bean’s money instead?
“Gege, gege…” He clung to him, unwilling to budge.
Tang Yu stayed firm, stubborn about having his brand-new boyfriend move in.
He started calling randomly.
“Gege, Director Tang, Boss, Leader, Corn Bean, very special Corn Bean, the best Corn Bean in the whole world…”
Still no reaction.
He started getting truly unhinged.
“Corn Bean, Corn Head…”
“Corn Kernel, Cornmeal, Corn Oil, Corn Sausage.”
Tang Yu still refused to compromise.
He started to get angry.
He snorted. “You wicked Corn Sausage!”
Pressing his fingers to his temple, Tang Yu said wearily, “You do know, right, that my parents didn’t pick the ‘yu’ in ‘zhongling yuxiu’ for my name so that after I met you, you could make up endless ‘yumi’ nicknames for me…”
He refused to lose.
“Corn Porridge. Corn Flour. Corn Cob.”
“Corn Cake. Corn Candy. Corn Pancake.”
“Corn Stalk. Corn Chowder. Corn Paste.”
“Corn Gruel!!”
“Stop,” Tang Yu drawled.
Author’s Note:
The cat: When it’s time to cuss people out, the vocab really flows! Give myself a like!
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