055: Bad Human, Bad Dog, Bad Mouth!
Tang Yu stared at the cat ears on Sang Zhao’s head.
So cute.
Wait, something’s wrong…
Really cute.
And still, something felt wrong…
Right now, Tang Yu felt like his brain was floating on clouds.
Where was his brain? Where had it gone? Why wouldn’t it work at all?
His thoughts were drifting, light and weightless, all the connections cut. Everything was a jumble, but even so, he was completely bewitched and just wanted to reach out and touch those kitten ears.
Sang Zhao glanced behind Tang Yu and saw the Samoyed and the “penguin” sneaking away.
Seeing that they’d gotten the message, he hurried to ramp up his distraction, pouring everything into pulling Tang Yu’s attention back to himself so he’d forget all about the suddenly appearing dog and penguin.
He squirmed a little, but he was actually in a rush, even while his mouth tried to look for excuses.
“They’re high-tech kitty ears, you can’t pinch too hard,” he said.
Tang Yu agreed.
Then he eagerly lifted his hand, hovering it over Sang Zhao’s head. When he saw that Sang Zhao wasn’t dodging, he finally reached down to touch them for real.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. His gaze stayed glued to the ears on top of Sang Zhao’s head and wouldn’t move at all.
They were little triangles that ended in sharp tips, and even the fluffed-out, spiky “smart hairs” at the tips were orange.
Was this really some kind of high-tech cat ears? Was this really a fake pair? Had technology gotten so advanced that even fake cat ears were this real?
He had no idea where Sang Zhao had bought this headband, but it was too realistic, so realistic that Tang Yu found it eerie.
But that beautiful face, topped with orange hair, and a pair of softly trembling cat ears of the same color hidden in it…
Even in his messiest dreams, Tang Yu had never seen something like this.
He didn’t have time to think too much. His head was full of one thought: touch first, think later!
Even if this was a dream, he had to hurry up and touch them before he woke up!
He cupped the pair of cat ears lightly.
They were warm, with a layer of soft fur over them, not rough at all. The fine fuzz was so soft that when he touched it, his palm and fingers tingled.
Tang Yu rolled the ear between his fingers very gently.
The ear was thin, and as soon as he pushed or nudged it, it gave a little twitch and shook in his hand.
Sang Zhao was still talking.
“It’s a surprise for gege.”
So cute.
It was so cute that even though Tang Yu had promised he’d only touch lightly, his fingers still slid into the hair at the base of the ear, wanting to lift it and see what kind of god-tier headband could be this realistic.
A jolt shot through Sang Zhao and he immediately slapped his hands over his ears and backed away.
He quickly looked behind Tang Yu and saw that the tiny night heron-edition Chinese farmyard penguin had already escaped.
But the dog was still there, one big white fluffy blob.
He cursed his teammates in his heart, but the dog was innocent too!
The dog was just too big. It wasn’t as nimble as a night heron. The night heron could jump and flap and slip right out the door. The dog couldn’t run fast enough!
Covering his ears so Tang Yu couldn’t touch them anymore snapped Tang Yu out of his trance.
Now he looked at Sang Zhao with a shaken expression.
“They feel so real. They’re just like the cat ears I’ve touched before. You…”
He hesitated.
“Where did you buy them? This is the surprise?”
It felt more like a shock.
Tang Yu stared at the cat-eared Sang Zhao, his throat tight, obviously confused out of his mind.
Great. One confusing incident wasn’t even fully processed, and more confusing things had piled on top.
Why were there so many strange, unbelievable things happening all at once?
Sang Zhao kept his mouth shut.
With him not saying anything, Tang Yu’s brain gradually woke back up.
He turned to look behind him.
The penguin was gone. He didn’t see the “penguin toy” either.
The dog was still there, a big white fluffy lump frozen in place.
Everything was stuck in this moment.
With his ears exposed, Sang Zhao was covering them and feeling deeply cheated.
He’d thought if he used his ears to grab all of Tang Yu’s attention, the Samoyed and the night heron would have time to escape. After that, he could just rely on pure nonsense and shameless flirting to get through it.
Once the dog and bird were gone, Tang Yu would have no proof. What could he say then?
If there was no evidence, then with enough bullshit and enough clinginess, there was still a chance to bluff his way through.
But now?
The dog was still here.
The “penguin toy” was the one that had run off.
He would’ve been better off if they’d both stayed put. Now the one that shouldn’t have gotten away was gone, his ears had been exposed for nothing, and he still hadn’t managed to cover anything up.
His ears had gotten touched, and he still hadn’t muddled things over.
If he tried to act cute now, there was still this huge dog right there…
He’d been covering his ears. Now he kind of wanted to pinch his philtrum—no, his cat-trum.
Stupid Samoyed and stupid bird, did they really love sticking together that much?
And while they were playing, they didn’t think to lock the door?
Of all times to get walked in on by Tang Yu, did it have to be when they were playing whatever it was that was so fun?!
Why did their playtime have to be fatal to small cats?!
Sang Zhao took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.
It was fine. He could still bluff.
As long as Tang Yu never said the word “yaoguai,” Sang Zhao absolutely would not give up. He would find a way to bluff through this.
Tang Yu stared at the Samoyed, and the more he looked, the more familiar it felt.
In theory, all Samoyeds looked about the same, big white fluffy marshmallow dogs.
So if he felt a Samoyed was familiar, that was normal enough.
But the more he looked at this one, who was standing there with its front paws together like a little soldier, the more specifically familiar this particular Samoyed felt.
He muttered exactly what he was thinking.
“This dog looks so familiar.”
Holding his head, Sang Zhao hurried to cut him off.
“That’s what all the Xia Moyes look like, isn’t it?” he said stiffly.
The moment those words left his mouth, the three living beings in the room—a man, a cat, and a dog—and the bird hiding at the doorway all froze in horror.
Samoyed: …Ahhhhhhh! Cat said Ye Ye’s real name!!
Ye Ye was only stuck here because dog was big and couldn’t get away, and cat did this to Ye Ye?
Cat just straight up shouted Ye Ye’s human name!
Tang Yu heard it loud and clear.
He turned back slowly, stopped looking at the Samoyed, and stared at Sang Zhao instead, letting out a short sound in his throat.
“Hm?”
Sang Zhao stopped, then clamped one hand over his ears and the other hand over his own mouth.
Bad dog, bad night heron, bad ears, bad mouth!
Why were there so many problems in one day?!
But this time, Tang Yu wasn’t going to be sent away so easily.
He seemed to have realized something.
He chased after Sang Zhao’s slip and began asking questions. His voice was soft, but it was like that one name had finally solved all those nagging, inexplicable doubts that had been hanging over him.
“What Xiao Ye?” he narrowed his eyes. “Ah. Xia Moye’s name. Xia Moye… sounds just like Samoyed, doesn’t it?”
Before, he’d just thought “Xia Moye” was a nice name, like summer paths and wide open fields, bright and fresh.
He’d even thought that whoever Xia Moye’s parents were, they really knew how to name a child.
Surname Xia, given name Moye, like some boy from a novel.
But at this moment, with just one slip from Sang Zhao, something clicked.
Maybe this pretty-sounding name “Xia Moye” didn’t mean summer, paths, forests, and fields at all.
Maybe, when you said it fast enough, when you stripped away all the semantic wishful thinking and just heard the sound, that other meaning finally surfaced, impatient to rush up into his mind.
Samoyed.
It was absurd.
What kind of parents would name a child “Samoyed”?
People didn’t just call him Xiao Ye. When parents named a kid, they said the full name again and again, surname and given name together, and they would definitely avoid any homophones that could turn into childhood nicknames.
Even with all that care, they’d still named him something that sounded like Samoyed?
Had this kid really gone to school for years without being called “Cotton Candy” or “Sheep Butt” or something like that?
Tang Yu suddenly thought of An Tihu.
Oh, right. An Tihu’s name was weird too.
Usually, people just called her Xiao An or An-jie, so you wouldn’t notice.
But in “An Tihu,” tihu didn’t just mean cleverness and ability… it was also the word for pelican.
There was too much information in his head, making the veins at his temple throb hard.
He turned halfway around and looked around the room, staring at the Samoyed.
The dog was anxiously kneading its paws on the floor.
Sang Zhao called the Samoyed “Xia Moye,” and “Xia Moye” really did sound like “Samoyed.”
And right here in front of him was… a Samoyed.
Before, Tang Yu had never seen a dog at the party, so a sudden dog had seemed weird.
But he had seen the birthday boy more than once.
He met the dog’s eyes and went quiet for a moment.
Then, in a strange, dazed impulse, he half-squatted down in front of the Samoyed.
Right under Sang Zhao and the dog’s shocked stares, he heard himself say, “Xiao Ye?”
Ye Ye: …Noooo.
Ye Ye was not, not, not the birthday boy Xia Moye today.
Ye Ye was just a silly, dumb, goofy dog!
Too bad he couldn’t talk, couldn’t argue his case.
If he opened his mouth now, things would get even messier.
But Tang Yu seemed to have made up his mind.
He reached out and started pushing aside the thick fur around the dog’s neck, feeling around for something.
Watching him, some of the tension in Sang Zhao’s chest finally eased.
Heaven could bear witness!
Thank goodness, before they ran over here, he’d made Ye Ye take everything off.
Ye Ye was big and dopey and didn’t have many strengths, but he was obedient. Really obedient.
The moment Sang Zhao told him to take off the collar and gold pendant, Ye Ye took them off at once and tucked them safely into his own consciousness.
So now, when Tang Yu checked the dog’s neck, he of course found nothing.
No gold pendant. No dog collar.
When Tang Yu didn’t find any evidence, he stood up again and looked around.
Still no penguin.
He shook his head and turned to the only person in the room who could talk.
“Where’s the penguin? Didn’t you say it was a toy?”
“If it’s a toy, why isn’t it here? Do toys just suddenly run off on their own?”
“I don’t know either,” Sang Zhao said weakly. “But, gege, do you want to touch my ears again?”
What could a little cat do?!
The only plan he’d managed to come up with that seemed remotely workable was to keep using his cat ears to redirect Tang Yu’s attention.
But his ears had already been touched, and Tang Yu was still hung up on every logical loophole in the room.
Did that mean he’d let his ears be touched for nothing?!
Tang Yu’s gaze slid back to him, landing on the hand he had pressed over his head.
He suddenly pushed.
“Take off your cat ear headband and let me see it,” he said.
Take what off?!
The ears were growing out of his skull, they weren’t actually a headband.
What, was he supposed to take his whole head off and hand it over?
In his heart, Sang Zhao screamed.
Stupid Corn Kernel had turned into grilled corn sausage.
Soft mushy Corn Paste.
He was sure his heart had stopped beating.
Ye Ye had already closed his eyes in despair.
Okay.
This was it.
They’d only managed to struggle this far.
Sang Zhao thought he’d let down the Bureau’s careful arrangements and failed Director Li’s honey-snow ice cream cone.
His entire “pretend to be human” career had collapsed because he’d fallen in love with the boss.
Apparently even cat yaoguai weren’t immune from turning into brainless lovers.
Ye Ye thought, it’s okay. Worst case, he’d just go back to Siberia, pull sleds, and plant potatoes.
At least now he knew a little English, so one day he could be bilingual, pulling sleds and planting potatoes, open his own ski resort, recoup the costs in one year, make a fortune in two.
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
Instinctively, Sang Zhao looked up.
Someone was standing in the doorway.
A tall, lean man blocked the glow from the hallway as he stepped inside.
He wore a white shirt with two pens clipped at the front pocket, one blue-black and one black.
He had rimless glasses, the restrained cheekbones and sharp jawline of the academic type, and when he looked over, his expression was calm as water.
He carried himself with a kind of quiet reserve that made it feel like even his hair gave off the scent of intelligence.
But the first thing Sang Zhao noticed wasn’t him.
It was what he was holding, a completely motionless night heron, frozen like it had been hit by a binding spell.
The man let his gaze drift lightly around the room.
His lips curved, and his voice was polite and proper as he spoke.
“Sorry to intrude. I thought I heard someone asking about a penguin toy?”
As he said this, he lifted the night heron in his hand in Tang Yu’s direction and gave it a little shake.
“It’s here.”
Tang Yu looked over.
That bird, shaped like a chubby little penguin, really didn’t move at all.
It looked exactly like a toy.
The way the man held the “penguin,” swinging it casually back and forth, was so relaxed and matter of fact and he looked so much like a serious academic, that it all felt strangely natural.
So natural that Tang Yu started to doubt his own memory.
Maybe, when he’d first come in, what he’d seen in the Samoyed’s paws really had been a penguin toy?
“This was by the door just now,” the man said. “I guess my dog was playing with it and flung it out through the gap.
“Oh, there he is.”
He strolled over to the Samoyed, put the night heron into Tang Yu’s arms with a smile, and said, “Sorry, could you hold this for me?”
Then he calmly pulled a leash from his pocket, bent down, and clipped it onto the Samoyed’s harness.
Tang Yu stared at the “penguin toy” in his hands, dazed.
He touched the feathers, then squeezed the beak.
Everything about it looked real, but it stayed totally limp and unmoving.
He pressed the back of his hand to it.
It wasn’t warm.
It really did feel like something stuffed with cotton, just like a toy.
Tang Yu’s mind got even more tangled.
When he finished leashing the dog, the man straightened up, his eyes landing on Sang Zhao for a beat before they calmly shifted to Tang Yu.
“This is my dog, William,” he said. “Looks like you were just playing with him?”
Tang Yu glanced down at the dog.
He hesitated.
The man, however, seemed completely at ease.
He offered his hand.
“Hello, I’m Li Shenyin. I work at Jiangyuan University, in the chemical engineering department. I’m an associate professor there.”
Tang Yu shook his hand.
“Nice to meet you. This is your dog?”
“Of course,” Li Shenyin said with a small laugh. “One of my colleagues is the parent of the little birthday star here. It just so happened I didn’t have class today, and my William loves playing with kids, so I thought I’d come join the fun.”
Then he shook hands with Sang Zhao too.
“Sang Zhao, right? We haven’t met before, but I heard about you from my colleague. You’re the birthday boy’s jiùjiu? I’m really just here to tag along, sorry for barging in like this.”
Sang Zhao wanted to say: Yeah, and who exactly are you?
But he swallowed it.
Because the hope in the Samoyed’s eyes was already bright enough to cook barbecue wings over.
A thought sprang up in his mind.
Ah.
Anyone who could make Ye Ye go from despairing Samo-moan to hopeful Samoyed the moment he showed up, anyone Ye Ye trusted this much, anyone whose voice sounded this familiar…
Especially when, under his explanation, the shock on Tang Yu’s face had already faded quite a bit.
Yeah.
He understood.
In this whole field, there was no one more reliable than this man.
A teacher.
A university teacher.
A grad-advisor associate professor teacher.
In the entire yaoguai world, there really wasn’t anyone more outstanding than him at this kind of thing.
Right, Teacher Border Collie.
Tang Yu was soothed by his composure too.
…Wow.
He was so normal.
In a crowd of events that demolished his world view, Li Shenyin really was the one who seemed most grounded in reality.
Li Shenyin reclaimed the “penguin toy” from Tang Yu, took the dog, said goodbye to them with both fur and feathers, and strolled out.
When he’d shot Sang Zhao a quick look as a signal, Sang Zhao had immediately pulled his cat ears back in.
Now he looked as normal as anyone, standing there and talking to Tang Yu like nothing had happened.
He even grumbled, “Seriously, if you don’t watch your dog properly, you shouldn’t let it run all over the place.
“Look, it scared me and gege half to death.”
“You were scared too?” Tang Yu asked, staring at the top of his head.
“Of course,” Sang Zhao said, perfectly righteous.
Tang Yu slowly took his phone out and turned it in his hand a few times.
Thinking of Xia Moye had reminded him of An Tihu.
Once he thought of An Tihu, he also remembered that sense of danger she gave off.
And what was it, exactly, that made him feel An Tihu was dangerous?
Oh, right.
He’d seen her do a handstand sprint, running on her hands and using her feet to hold up an umbrella.
And she wasn’t the only one who’d done something that strange.
There was that other incident too…
Holding his phone, without even looking at it, he kept his eyes on Sang Zhao’s face.
“Mind if I make a call?” he asked.
Sang Zhao didn’t know why he was asking, so he just said, “Of course.”
So Tang Yu called the vice president.
While he waited for the call to connect, his eyes never left Sang Zhao’s face, closely watching his expression.
The line clicked.
“Hello? What’s up?” came the VP’s voice.
Tang Yu skipped the small talk.
“That new salesperson, what’s her name?”
Sang Zhao’s expression stayed perfectly natural.
Tang Yu wanted to find a crack in it, but Sang Zhao didn’t even know who this salesperson was.
When you didn’t know anything, there were no cracks to reveal.
This was what you called: as long as you stayed dumb enough, no attack could hurt you.
The VP thought for a moment.
“Oh, let me think… right, she’s called Bei Jixiong.”
Tang Yu wrote the three characters out in his mind.
“Jixiong,” those two characters ji had only one reading, but xiong was a polyphonic character.
The VP read her name like “Bei Jiqiong.”
But Tang Yu said, “There’s another reading, right? ‘Xiong’ in the first tone, like ‘xiong’ in polar bear?”
He recombined “Bei Jixiong” in his mind using that other reading.
Suddenly everything clicked into place, something absurd and strange taking shape.
“So all together, her name is Bei Jixiong. That’s Beiji xiong. Polar bear.”
Staring at his own hands, Sang Zhao picked at his fingers and looked up at the ceiling like he hadn’t heard a thing.
The VP had no idea what was going on.
He was just happy to watch the show.
“Hahahaha, who would name their kid ‘Polar Bear’?”
Still holding the phone, Tang Yu said quietly, “Yeah. And it’s not like anyone would name their kids Samoyed and Pelican either, right?”
“Huh? Samoyed? Ah, Pelican? Oh, you mean An Tihu?” the VP said. “Isn’t that a pretty name?”
“Pretty,” Tang Yu said. “But pretty weird too.”
He looked at Sang Zhao.
“What do you think? Is our world… real?”
The VP cracked up laughing.
“What’s wrong with you? Did falling in love mess up your head?”
Tang Yu hung up.
Sang Zhao’s gaze kept darting around.
His mouth tried to keep chatting with Tang Yu, but his eyes were wandering.
“My kitty ears are cute, right?” he tried.
Tang Yu answered honestly.
“They’re cute, but also kind of terrifying.”
He was easily spooked.
If Sang Zhao wasn’t that good-looking, he would’ve screamed back there.
Sang Zhao had no idea what was so scary about them.
He was completely sincere when he said, “Gege, I thought you’d really like cat ears.”
Tang Yu loved cats, and he loved him.
As soon as he popped his cat ears out to distract Tang Yu, it had worked like magic.
With that, how could Tang Yu not like cat ears?
If anyone said that, even a not-so-smart kitty like him wouldn’t believe it.
“I do like them,” Tang Yu said. “They’re just… a bit too realistic.
“Where’s your headband? Did you put it away already? You still haven’t showed it to me.”
Where was he supposed to conjure a headband from and show it to him?!
Anyway, the dog and the night heron were both gone now, and Corn Kernel couldn’t really do anything to him, hehehe.
So his guilt evaporated.
He snorted.
“No. You can only see it when it’s on my head.”
Tang Yu didn’t actually want to see the headband.
If anything, if Sang Zhao really did pull out some high-tech headband and let him examine it from every angle, if it really turned out to be nothing more than some new gadget, he’d probably feel a strange kind of regret.
This was better.
Tang Yu thought, he didn’t know the truth yet, not really, but he finally had a clear sense of where things were off and a few threads to pull on.
Silently, he repeated Sang Zhao’s name in his heart a few times.
Sang Zhao. Sang Zhao.
It was a perfectly normal human name.
A rarer surname, a meaningful given name.
Nothing in it sounded like Samoyed, Pelican, Polar Bear, or any other animal pun.
So that meant…
He was normal. Human. Right?
But he was also Xia Moye’s jiùjiu.
And his reactions had been suspicious from start to finish.
Tang Yu lowered his gaze, thinking about something.
When he looked up again, he asked, “When your jiejie and jiefu named Xiao Ye, what were they thinking?”
“I dunno, I don’t know what they were thinking, hehe,” Sang Zhao bluffed as hard as he could.
“You don’t know?”
“Mhm, I… I don’t know.”
Tang Yu nodded, letting it go.
He smiled like he’d just found something very interesting.
“But I have a feeling,” he said.
“I’m going to find out sooner or later.”
Author’s Note:
As for when the identities will be exposed, it’s actually coming up soon.
Mainly, I tried out a few versions and still feel like it’s more fun if they do it first and then the identities get revealed!
After all, “finding out your boyfriend is a little cat and then struggling with whether to sleep with your kitty boyfriend” and “sleeping with your boyfriend and then discovering he’s a little cat”... the second one feels more entertaining, right?
Once the second one happens, the first one can still happen later, lololol, so it’s soon~
Once the reveal happens, it’ll also be about time to tease the ending.
We’ll probably wrap up around early September~
Planned word count is 350k. Blinked and already wrote 250k, it really went by fast!
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