048: Kitty’s Kiss!
The car drove all the way out of the city toward a small reservoir in the suburbs.
In the car behind them, Tang Yu checked the map on his phone and did a quick search. Turned out this was a small reservoir attached to a farmhouse-style leisure spot.
They raised fish for guests to catch, and they provided camping areas and barbecue grills. It was a fully self-service, all-in-one outdoor fun place.
When they saw An Tihu’s car turn off onto the road leading into the reservoir, Tang Yu and the others stopped following. Their car went straight instead, continuing along the main road.
The tailing operation had officially come to an end, and Xiao Hengmiao could finally relax. He had been tense the whole time, worried that if they really caught something, Tang Yu would lose his mind and he would not be able to hold him back.
Good thing that when Sang Zhao said he was going out to play, he really was just going out to play. Honestly, at his age, he really loved to play.
Leisurely, Xiao Hengmiao shot a glance at Tang Yu. “Happy now? You know he didn’t lie about going to the reservoir so he could secretly go shopping. He really did go to the reservoir with friends. Satisfied?”
Tang Yu nodded, his expression smoothing out. In an instant, it was like his whole face relaxed. He looked five or six years younger.
He was just about to say something when his phone chimed. He looked down and saw a WeChat from Sang Zhao.
【Arrived!】
Just those two words were enough to soften Tang Yu’s gaze.
All right, he thought. All right. If he says he is not allowed to go, then he will not go.
Tang Yu thought that he really had been too extreme and that was not a good thing.
They had only just started dating. There would be plenty of chances and plenty of time later. Was he really afraid he would not have any chance to blend into Sang Zhao’s friend group in the future?
When he and Sang Zhao talked on WeChat, they usually used voice messages. So he pressed and held the mic and spoke.
“Okay. Have fun. When you are done, you can send me your location and I will come pick you all up.”
He lifted his thumb and sent the voice message.
He stared at the screen, waiting for Sang Zhao’s reply. Over there, Sang Zhao really did reply almost instantly.
His tone was slow and drawn out. The voice message was only one second long, just a single, clear word: “All?”
Kitty’s Chinese grades were average, but kitty could speak human language. Kitty knew “all” was not singular. It meant at least two people.
So Sang Zhao was asking who that “all” referred to, exactly.
Tang Yu’s breath stopped for a second. He gripped his phone tight and thought, Uh oh.
Trouble. He should not have let his guard down.
He had gotten used to picking up and dropping off Sang Zhao and Xiao Ye, so when he saw the two of them going out to play together this time as well, of course he naturally thought to bring them both back.
But from the start, when Sang Zhao first mentioned going out to play, all he ever said was that he was going with “friends.”
He had not mentioned his nephew or any kid at home, not even once.
Now Tang Yu was drowning in regret. Great, he had let it slip. He should not have made it sound like he knew Xia Moye was there too.
His mind went blank and started picturing the worst-case scenario.
Oh no. Now Sang Zhao would realize he had been followed, think his possessiveness was too strong, that he was some kind of creep doing tailing work. Their brand-new relationship would get voided on the spot, and his fresh-out-of-the-pot boyfriend would flap away like a duck flying off the plate.
Before he could answer, though, a new voice message arrived. Sounding very pleased with himself, Sang Zhao said, “You mean you want to pick me and Big Sister Xiao An up?”
Then he let out a string of cutesy little “awww” noises. “Awww, you are so nice! But you do not have to worry about her, she has a car!”
Tang Yu had not plugged in his earphones and just played it on speaker, so Xiao Hengmiao heard every word.
Clicking his tongue over and over, Xiao Hengmiao said, “Look at that. This is what you get for picking an idiot for a boyfriend, right? You were already halfway onto the highway and he is still over there a-ba-a-ba-ing about how nice you are.”
Tang Yu told him to shut up, then sent another voice message to reply to Sang Zhao.
“Mm, okay. I will not pick her up.”
He would not pick up An Tihu, but as far as Sang Zhao was concerned, he still had one more with him. With him and Xia Moye together, it was definitely “all,” just that Tang Yu did not know.
So he told Tang Yu, “I brought the little dog kid too, so you really don’t have to. Our friend can send us back.”
Spacing out in the passenger seat, Xiao Hengmiao perked up the moment he heard that.
“Dog! Did he say dog? I told you I saw a dog! I definitely saw a dog! A huge white one, as big as a bear with fur!”
Tang Yu shot him a look, feeling like he was overreacting. “You do not get it. When he says little dog, he means the kid.”
“Who calls a kid a little dog? Does the kid not mind?” Xiao Hengmiao did not buy it.
Thinking of the way Xia Moye had looked, Tang Yu answered with certainty, “The kid is really happy about it.”
“Who does that? What kind of normal person does that?” Xiao Hengmiao grumbled.
Tang Yu: …Well, fair point.
That part had always been pretty strange. But there were already so many strange things that one more did not make much difference. Tang Yu just quietly filed it away, secretly stacking another odd little note in his heart.
He kept feeling like there were more and more strange things about Sang Zhao.
—
Listening to the excited puppy barking by his ear, Sang Zhao propped his chin on his hand and let out a sigh.
He had not actually wanted to bring the little dog. The little dog did not even like eating fish that much.
In a party full of cats and birds, a little dog eating fish was as out of place as a little dog catching mice.
But once Xia Moye found out via WeChat voice messages that they were going out to play, he absolutely had to tag along.
School was out for summer vacation, he did not have cram school or any extra classes, no enrichment classes, no interest classes. Of course he had nothing to do.
He said he was bored out of his mind at home. Every day was just mobile games. And sure, mobile games were fun, but playing too much made his brain go stupid.
“You were already stupid,” Sang Zhao had told him, merciless as ever. “You have been on break for a whole month. Have you done any of your homework?”
Xia Moye dodged the question. “Heeheehee.”
The Pallas’s cat chimed in. “Oh right, I remember you said the black panther and the lynx pretended to be your parents in the WeChat parent group. Your teacher is always in there pushing you to study.”
That reminded Sang Zhao that, riding the whole “the dog got lost” incident, Xia Moye had managed to trick himself into a pair of cyber parents. They were in his class WeChat group every day, dutifully replying “received.”
Unfortunately, Ye Ye did not want to study at all. He only wanted to play.
“Why are we talking about studying? That is not what a little dog should be thinking about!” Xia Moye declared with a wave of his dog paw.
“Charge forward toward catching little fish, grilling little fish, and eating little fish!”
When they arrived and looked over the campsite, the black panther and the others were already there putting up the tent.
Sang Zhao walked over to take a look. Sure enough, it was the same tent from that last wild drinking party. Back when they had played with the yoga ball, somebody’s claws had torn the fabric at the corner. The tear was still there.
No one fixed it, patched it, or replaced it.
He sighed. “This tent really earned its keep with you guys. It never gets a proper rest.”
What could they do? They were big cats. They loved playing in the wild.
They liked staring at the sky or the moon and yowling away with meows and roars. Just like that, all the frustration they had built up working at human companies would be swept away.
Sang Zhao wanted to help out, but there was nowhere to fit in his hands.
The black panther and the others were way too practiced. It was like an assembly line. There was not a single spare slot for him to help.
So he walked along the campsite to the bridge to see what was going on there.
When he got there, he saw that several of An Tihu’s bird friends had already arrived.
Grey heron, cormorant, and a merganser were primly preening their feathers at the water’s edge with their beaks.
Howling and yelping, Xia Moye ran over and leaned forward by Sang Zhao’s side, staring at one particular bird.
Ye Ye the dog’s eyes went wide. He secretly tugged on the hem of Sang Zhao’s sleeve. “Wow, why is there a penguin?”
The bird standing on the shore heard him and turned its head to look back.
“I am a night heron,” it said proudly.
“Some humans call me the Chinese countryside penguin,” the night heron corrected solemnly. “But I am a night heron, not a penguin.”
“But you really do look like a penguin,” Ye Ye said with absolute sincerity.
Then he started talking nonsense. “You know, I really like penguins, because penguins look like dinosaurs.”
The night heron was not happy about that. It squawked and croaked, “Whose kid is this?!”
In a panic, Sang Zhao grabbed the scruff of Xia Moye’s neck and bolted. “Mine, mine, he is mine, I am taking him away!”
He took off at a run.
The lynx, who worked at a chain supermarket, had brought another huge bag of shrimp this time. The Pallas’s cat, who worked at a hotel, rummaged through his “cover” bag and took out a pile of hotel supplies, then pulled out even more from his spiritual storage.
Hotel slippers, disposable towels and bath towels, all kinds of things, soon covered the ground in front of the tent.
The merganser waddled past and, in a noisy, raspy voice that sounded suspiciously like a cartoon duck, asked, “How much?”
The Pallas’s cat answered bluntly, “Free. I stole it from work.”
“What?! You steal from work?” The merganser was utterly shocked.
The Pallas’s cat launched straight into his grievances. “I front money for my boss. Oh, I mean the owner of our hotel. I front the cash for coffee and milk tea every time!”
“But when it comes time to reimburse me, they always round the amount down when they fill out the form. They shave it off at my expense! I spend 134, I tell my boss I spent 134, and the boss gives me 100.”
Defiantly, he went on, “I cannot bring myself to chase my boss down every single time. I still have to work for this capitalist boss after all. So the only thing I can do is steal a little stuff to earn my money back.”
The Pallas’s cat did have a moral bottom line. He was crafty, but not bad.
“Do not worry, I do not steal that much. I just take some supplies. Slippers, tissues, snacks, that kind of thing. Once I have stolen back the amount I am owed, I stop.”
He added confidently, “Is this not part of pretending to be human too? Right? Blending in with humans! You cannot just let money go missing!”
The duck wore a look like his eyes had really been opened.
He went quiet for a moment, then asked as he passed by Sang Zhao, “Do you treat your boss like this too? Is this what you and your boss do?”
Sang Zhao rejected that outright. “Of course not.”
The merganser let out a breath of relief. But before that breath could fully settle, it got lodged in his throat.
Because very casually, with nothing to hide in front of a stranger duck, Sang Zhao said, “I am dating my big boss. How would he ever short my reimbursements?”
“…Help,” the merganser said weakly. “You cats really are wilder than the last.”
Sang Zhao did not care what the duck thought. He just picked up a bag of snacks from the Pallas’s cat’s little stall, wandered off with it, and happily took the dog along.
The two of them first went to the shore and started picking long, soft dogtail grass to braid little dog toys. After a while, the lynx’s shrimp finished grilling, and Xia Moye turned back into a big fluffy cotton-candy Samoyed, rearing up on his hind legs with his paws pressed together, begging Sang Zhao to peel the grilled shrimp for Ye Ye to eat.
Standing there feeding shrimp to the dog, from his angle, the big white Samoyed sitting with its tail swishing really did look plump and tasty.
Sang Zhao clicked his tongue. “Looking at you like this, you really do look like a white fox.”
He was not the only cat playing with the dog. A few of An Tihu’s bird friends came over to join in and take pictures of the pup, even little videos.
Before Sang Zhao and the big cats went down to the water to catch fish, the little dog was already completely surrounded by birds filming him. The cats swam a lap and dragged back a whole bucket of fish, and the dog was still busy being filmed.
“Just one more shot, he is so cute! You have to film it like this if you want good content!”
Ye Ye wagged his tail and pounced from one person to the next, happy to let absolutely anyone pet him. Pet him, go ahead, everyone could pet him.
Sang Zhao took a ton of pictures too. Scenery, selfies, group shots. There were so many that when he swiped through his gallery, it felt like it would never end.
He slipped into the tent, sat down on a folding stool at the entrance, and looked down at his phone. He picked out a few photos where everyone was in human form, then happily posted a nine-photo grid to his Moments.
He had barely posted it when he refreshed and immediately saw a like pop up.
It was from Tang Yu.
Quietly, without a word, Tang Yu had liked his Moments. Just when that made Sang Zhao start feeling inexplicably guilty, a private voice message came in from Tang Yu.
He pressed play. It was only three simple words.
“Are you happy?”
Nothing else.
Holding his phone, staring at the chat window, Sang Zhao rubbed his face. Why did he suddenly feel like a wayward pet saying, “Master, I am out having fun and not coming home”?
He replayed that voice message several times and felt like Tang Yu did not sound very cheerful.
Oh. The human is in a bad mood, is he? Is it because he was not allowed to come pick up his little cat that he is upset?
Well, kittens were not afraid of that at all.
Not only was he not afraid, he did not even need to coax the human. He just needed to tease him a little and the human would be caught between his paws in no time.
He sent a sticker of a kitten peeking its head out, testing the waters.
When Tang Yu did not react, he followed up. “It is not a big deal! Not a big deal at all! Gege, let big problems turn into small ones and small ones turn into little cookies. Do not be mad!”
On the other end, Tang Yu clearly froze for a moment.
It was two full minutes before he replied. In the voice message this time, every syllable sounded like he was holding back laughter.
“I am not mad,” Tang Yu said with a sigh.
Pressing the phone tight against his ear, Sang Zhao listened carefully. With the phone this close, it was like Tang Yu was speaking right into his ear.
Right beside his ear, Tang Yu said softly,
“Can we turn them into salted egg yolk sandwich cookies? I will buy them for you. You have to come home early.”
Sang Zhao touched the side of his neck, then slid his fingers to the hollow at the base of his throat. It felt all tingly.
In the distance, the black panther was calling loudly for him to come help catch fish again. He should have dropped his phone right away, turned back into a cat, and sprinted off, leaving the phone tossed in the tent.
Instead, he felt a little lazy and made no move to change back.
He just sat in the tent in human form, holding his phone, looking out through the entrance at the pale blue sky. He wondered what salted egg yolk cookies tasted like.
It was not bad being a person. It was not bad having a boyfriend either. Even though he could not actually taste the cookies Tang Yu had bought him at that moment, his mouth and his brain had already gone sweet first, soft and syrupy like honey.
Big issues were shrinking down into small issues, and small issues were turning into snacks, with Corn Bean there to turn them into little cookies for him. So all Sang Zhao had to do was wait and eat the cookies. That was how it worked, right?
“Gege.” He pressed and held to record, calling out in a loud, lingering voice.
After basking in the sun until he felt full to the brim, he finally went back out to catch fish with the others.
Once they had fish, some like An Tihu scooped them straight into her huge mouth to eat right at the shore, while the lynx and the Pallas’s cat deftly descaled them and grilled them.
The merganser swam happily around the reservoir, the cormorant snatched fish behind it, and Sang Zhao changed back into a little orange tabby. He lay on a floating plank drifting past them and used his fluffy orange paws to stroke the birds’ feathers.
Satisfied. The paw feel was excellent.
When they were tired of eating, they slept wherever they could find. When they woke up, they went right back to playing on the shore or in the water. They did not care if it was day or night. Eat then sleep, sleep then play, play then eat again. They kept it up until Sunday afternoon.
Monday was almost here, and this group of corporate drone yaoguai had to go back to work. Only then did everyone drag themselves, full of reluctance, into their cars and head home.
Sang Zhao rode back to the apartment with An Tihu, then flopped onto his bed and rolled back and forth a few times before ending up sprawled on his stomach. When he was out, all he could think about was hurrying home. Once he was home, all he could think about was going out again.
He really was a very conflicted little cat.
Once Monday at work started, everything went back to normal.
Which meant Sang Zhao was bored again.
That did not mean there was nothing fun in his life. Right now, the most fun, most novel thing at hand was his boyfriend, Corn Bean.
Corn Bean was lots of fun, but Corn Bean was very busy on Mondays. He was so busy that he could not even finish his work during normal hours and had to keep working overtime.
Originally, Sang Zhao got off work right on the dot. But when he checked his phone, he hesitated and did not rush out the door.
In the past, he would have sprinted out and raced to the subway home. But things were different now. Now he had a boyfriend.
He thought that he could not just leave all the overtime to Tang Yu. He could stay too. Even if he could not help much with the work, he could at least stay and play on his phone while he waited for Tang Yu to get off.
So he went into the president’s office and wandered around, then settled on the sofa and watched Tang Yu working at his computer.
Tang Yu tried to coax him. “I will be done soon. Then we will go eat.”
Very crisply, Sang Zhao said what was easily the most hypocritical sentence he had said in his twenty years of being a cat and pretending to be human. “I am not hungry.”
The moment he said it, he startled himself.
…How could he not be hungry? He was basically hungry all the time. As long as his mouth was free, he was thinking about food.
For him to proactively claim he was not hungry was truly the most dishonest thing he had ever said.
Tang Yu was shocked too. He actually put down what he was doing and stared at him, then said, “What is it? Do you feel sick?”
“…No,” Sang Zhao said.
What kind of reaction was that? Was he really that greedy, that much of a bottomless pit, that the moment he was not thinking about food, Corn Bean suspected he might be ill?
Was that reasonable? Absolutely not. And it was not the orange cat that was being unreasonable, it was Corn Bean.
“How about I order you some takeout first?” Tang Yu asked.
Instead of answering, Sang Zhao got up from the sofa, rolled the wheeled chair in front of Tang Yu’s desk over, and plopped down right next to him.
Unable to sit still, he reached out and started rummaging through the pen holder on Tang Yu’s desk.
He looked and felt around and discovered that along with the usual black pens, red pens, and pencils, there was also an orange highlighter.
He picked that pen up and rubbed it between his fingers. It was a chubby highlighter, the whole shell a bright orange.
Tang Yu finished going through another round of documents before finally glancing over at him. The first thing he saw was the same bright orange as a big tangerine, right on top of Sang Zhao’s head.
Noticing that he was playing with the pen, Tang Yu chuckled. “New pen. It is the same orange as your hair.”
Popping off the cap, Sang Zhao looked at it and nodded. He had to admit, the color really was close to his own fur. Orange to the point it almost glowed, deep with a hint of brown, genuinely very pretty.
“I want to draw with this pen,” he said.
Tang Yu turned back to his computer. “Go ahead.”
Sang Zhao walked over to the printer and pulled a blank sheet of A4 from its belly, then sat quietly at Tang Yu’s side, scribbling with the orange highlighter.
He did not last long.
He treated Tang Yu like a brand-new toy, and no matter what he was doing, he wanted to drag Tang Yu into it.
By the time Tang Yu finished his latest batch of approvals and turned to look, what he saw was Sang Zhao, pen in hand, staring at him with bright eyes.
Drawing out his words, Sang Zhao said, “I do not want to draw on the paper anymore. I want to draw on you.”
Tang Yu: ??
He genuinely wondered if he had left his ears somewhere else.
Otherwise, how could he possibly have heard Sang Zhao say something like that? What even was this? Where was this bus headed? It was definitely not headed for preschool.
He made a half-hearted attempt at resisting. “…I still have a video meeting later.”
“Got it,” Sang Zhao said, drawing the word out. It sounded like he had heard, but judging from his actions, he had not.
He sat there blocking Tang Yu’s escape route, leaned forward, and grabbed Tang Yu by the collar.
He hauled Tang Yu toward himself and stared closely at his flushed face and his neck.
Tang Yu did not say a word.
It was not just that he did not say a word. He did not even struggle.
Excited, Sang Zhao undid his collar, tugged it aside, and exposed his collarbone. Then he looked it over, and with the highlighter in his other hand, he bit the cap off with his teeth. Holding the pen, he circled a tiny raised mole on Tang Yu’s collarbone.
…A shiver like a jolt of electricity shot through Tang Yu’s whole body. He did not make a sound, but he was shaking.
Completely unaware, Sang Zhao took the circle he had drawn and treated it as a head, then drew two little triangles on top for ears.
Exactly, he had drawn a little cat head.
Which meant he still needed eyes, a nose, a mouth, and whiskers…
Tang Yu gritted his teeth and bore it as long as he could. When he really could not stand it anymore, he finally let out a breathy, “Mm, that tickles.”
At last, Sang Zhao finished his masterpiece. He tilted his head and admired it, more and more pleased with what he saw. Beautiful. Corn Bean’s little orange cat on his skin.
The more he looked, the more he liked it. Liked it so much that, on impulse, he pulled Tang Yu even closer and kissed the little cat he had drawn on his collarbone.
The moment Sang Zhao’s lips pressed down, Tang Yu could not hold back the sound in his throat. A soft gasp slipped out.
Tang Yu raised a hand and pinched the fabric at Sang Zhao’s waist between his fingers. The way he held on felt like he was barely holding himself back and urging something else on.
Naturally, Sang Zhao heard it.
Still clutching his collar, he tilted him left, then right, and exclaimed in pure amazement,
“Wow, you are making the same sound as steaming corn.”
Like a pressure cooker full of steam, letting out that hiss after the corn was done, yes, exactly that sound.
Excited, he started reminiscing. “My mom used to steam corn. It made the exact same sound!”
Tang Yu’s hand, which had been clutching at Sang Zhao’s shirt, froze.
Slowly, in a daze, he let go.
He looked down at his own rumpled collar, then lifted his fingers and pressed them to the spot on his collarbone that had just been kissed.
His head had been spinning, his whole body flushed so hot that he could not feel anything except Sang Zhao’s warmth.
Then that one sentence about Mom steaming corn smacked him right back into cold reality.
He took a few deep breaths before he could steady himself. With some effort, Tang Yu managed, “Let us not talk about moms, okay?”
The moment he said that, Sang Zhao’s eyebrows drooped.
…Why were moms off limits? He was a mama’s boy cat, you know.
Author’s Note:
Kitty’s brain: Cute! Draw a kitty head! Orange pen!
Corn Bean’s brain: #￥@#%&…???
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