056: He’s Corn Bean, Not a Corn Spirit!
When Sang Zhao and Xia Moye got back to the apartment and shut themselves up in Ye Ye’s room, surrounded by dog beds, they finally let out a long breath.
That counted as the end of a truly cat-flying-dog-jumping birthday party.
Looking back on it, it had been a mess, sure, but it was Ye Ye’s very first birthday.
After thinking it over, Sang Zhao still chose to be positive.
“If you ignore all the holes where the red-bean-and-lotus-paste filling spilled out, and ignore all the dangers of kitty paws and dog paws showing…” he said slowly. “Then overall, it was pretty good!”
He was still very satisfied with his first time throwing a birthday party for his best dog friend.
Look how lively it’d been.
There’d been food and drinks and games, everything you could want. All in all, it had been bright and cheerful, and in front of Xia Moye’s classmates, it had absolutely given the little dog a lot of face.
Xia Moye tilted his head, thought about it, and decided he really didn’t care about all that other stuff.
He fully agreed.
“Yeah, it was actually really great.”
There was just one thing the little dog really couldn’t get over.
“Except that one sentence you said. The ‘all the Xia Moyes look like this’ one…” he said gloomily.
That one line had almost scared the dog’s soul right out of his body.
A little dog really couldn’t take that kind of shock. Please, Cat, you can’t treat a little dog that way!
He really shouldn’t have brought it up, because the second he did, Sang Zhao perked right up.
Ha.
Did he look like some good-tempered little kitty who swallowed his grievances?
Did Ye Ye Dog think he was reliable? He was full of holes too.
Arms folded, Sang Zhao glared at him.
“Yeah. Except for you and the penguin rolling around together in the home theater, everything was perfect.
“I really don’t get it. You barely know that bird. You’ve seen each other a handful of times at most, you’re basically just acquaintances, and you still had to hide from everyone and go play with the bird alone in the movie room?”
“Little dog playing with a bird, the world’s turned upside down,” he huffed.
Even as a cat, he’d managed to resist the urge to play with the bird. How did the dog end up going off to play so hard with it that he’d almost played himself right back into his original form?
Hearing that, the Samoyed got offended.
He was very wronged, actually.
Ye Ye said, “Wasn’t playing with it! That bad bird tried to hit Ye Ye! It said it was going to pluck Ye Ye’s fur to build its nest!”
What a grievance.
Even back when he’d been at the ski resort, pulling sleds and eating potatoes, he’d never suffered a humiliation like that.
Was he the kind of white dog who could be threatened by a single bird?
Waving his little hands as he spoke, Ye Ye explained, “Ye Ye body-slammed it like a fierce dog and knocked it down!
“Ha! If it looks like a penguin, Ye Ye has to let it see what a mighty and fearsome dog really is!”
Sang Zhao looked at his short little grade-schooler body and his soft, round cheeks, then thought about how he turned into that big armful of white cloud in dog form…
Honestly, where was the mighty? Where was the fearsome?
“But you definitely can’t let yourself be bullied,” Sang Zhao said, agreeing with the core point.
Sure birds needed feathers to build nests, but they always picked them up. Who went around plucking them off other people?
Wow, just because the Samoyed had a tofu face and a cotton body, did that bird really think he was easy to push around?
They looked at each other and immediately understood what the other was thinking.
Cat and dog shared a look of righteous fury and both nodded.
They were sitting in one of the many dog beds scattered all over the room.
Border Collie Teacher wasn’t sitting in a dog bed. He was on a nearby stool, one leg crossed over the other, holding a clear glacier glass in his hand.
He swirled the ice water in the cup elegantly, looked at the two of them, and spoke in a leisurely tone.
“You were too impulsive, William.”
There was no one else around, so who exactly was he still calling William?
Ye Ye grumbled, “That’s just a random name you gave me, don’t call me that! You don’t even take me to play with you…”
His ending rose in a pitiful little whine.
Border Collie Teacher didn’t care at all about his small-dog feelings.
He’d actually been pretty kind to the Samoyed already.
Since Samoyeds looked like sheep, and since Border Collie Teacher had become human and lost his flock, finding a “sheep” in Jiangyuan to herd a little made for some small comfort.
But he really did think Ye Ye was dumb.
“What’s wrong with William?” he asked. “Even a random name is better than carefully thinking one up and then writing the answer right there in the test question.”
His own name was Li Shenyin, a very normal human name. He really couldn’t understand why the Samoyed had gone and named himself Xia Moye.
Border Collie Teacher shook his head.
“I’ll never understand why yaoguai all like naming themselves after their species.
“Honestly, I’ve already met two ‘Jin Mao’ and three ‘Bai Mao’.”
As he said this, he fixed his gaze on Sang Zhao, like he’d finally met a kindred spirit among yaoguai.
Looking at that pretty face and that perfectly normal name, he was more than satisfied.
“You thought of this long ago, didn’t you?” he said. “That’s why you chose a name that has nothing to do with your species.”
“…Mm,” Sang Zhao said.
In truth, it was just that he couldn’t bear to leave his moms.
He’d taken one character from each of their names. That was how you got “Sang Zhao.”
Maybe he wasn’t that smart, but he was one hundred percent a mama’s boy cat.
He didn’t feel guilty at all and accepted the compliment about his “cleverness” completely straight-faced.
Still, his expression twisted as he started reviewing the day together with Ye Ye.
“Do you think… we have a good chance of keeping this under wraps?”
Propping his chin up in his hand, he said, “He might not know the truth yet, but he definitely feels something’s off.
“That’s your fault, you doggy, you bad thing. You could have locked the door!”
“He definitely noticed,” Ye Ye agreed.
With Li Shenyin’s name on his ID, Border Collie Teacher took a sip of water, then started praising them again.
“Smart,” he said.
Now that he heard that, Sang Zhao got anxious.
“So what do we do?”
He’d already started pretending to be human, he couldn’t just stop halfway, could he?
Well, he might be tempted to stop, but the Bureau definitely wouldn’t agree.
He asked his question, but instead of answering, Border Collie Teacher brought up something else.
“That President Tang is your boyfriend, right?” he said.
His eyes landed on Sang Zhao, like he’d seen right through this little orange cat.
“How do you know?!” Sang Zhao said, surprised.
Border Collie Teacher didn’t bother explaining how he knew.
He went straight to offering advice.
“Since he’s your boyfriend, I’d suggest you spend a lot of time with him in the near future,” he said.
“After all, if your identity ends up exposed beyond any possibility of being covered up, and he really can’t accept it, to the point it starts shaking his worldview and his sanity…”
He paused.
“Then the Bureau will erase his memory.”
Border Collie Teacher sounded like he was deliberately making it sound serious, like he was poking at the kitten to see how he’d react.
“At that point, he won’t even remember your name, never mind your love.”
But that nuance went right over Sang Zhao’s head.
He didn’t pick up on the test, but he was very confident.
He startled for a moment, then immediately relaxed. He didn’t seem to be taking it to heart.
“He won’t,” he said firmly.
Border Collie Teacher was surprised.
“And how can you guarantee that?”
Guarantees needed facts, needed evidence, and Sang Zhao had none of that.
All he had was the knowledge that Tang Yu treated him well, that Tang Yu was gentle and had a good personality.
And he wasn’t some terrifying kind of yaoguai.
He wasn’t a black bear or a tiger, not a snake, not a rat, not a cockroach, not an ant.
If you were happily dating someone and then suddenly found out your boyfriend was a little cat… that wasn’t so bad, was it?
At least it wasn’t scary, right?
Surely that was better than finding out your boyfriend was a cockroach, right?
Could timid little Corn Bean accept his boyfriend being a cat?!
Well, that was the problem.
He had no way to guarantee it.
“I can’t guarantee it…” he admitted.
“But, he’s Corn Bean. So he won’t.”
Border Collie Teacher: …Huh?
He honestly couldn’t see how that followed.
“Corn Bean?” he said. “Corn can become a spirit now?”
Ye Ye waved a white dog paw to cut in.
“No, Corn Bean is a pet name,” he explained.
Border Collie Teacher rubbed his temples.
“…I feel like I’m getting a headache,” he muttered, only barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes.
Forget it.
He couldn’t be bothered to argue this one.
He hadn’t just come today to celebrate the Samoyed’s birthday anyway.
He also needed to tell Ye Ye something.
Border Collie Teacher pinched one of the Samoyed’s little bear ears.
“Remember how I told you I was going to move out at the end of the year?” he said. “That’s not going to happen. It’ll have to wait until next summer.”
Ye Ye behaved very nicely.
“Okay,” he said.
Hearing that, the corners of Sang Zhao’s mouth drooped.
This was his first time meeting Border Collie Teacher in person, but Teacher Border Collie had already helped him a lot before.
His side-job posters and copy had all been written by Border Collie Teacher, and today he’d helped them cover up again.
In Sang Zhao’s eyes, he was one of those truly reliable grown-up adults, ranked somewhere above An-jie and below Director Li.
And now, the first thing he heard was that Border Collie Teacher was moving away.
Of course he felt a little disappointed.
Ye Ye saw his mood and put a dog paw on his knee.
“That’s just how it is. Once people start making money, they don’t want to live here anymore.
“The apartment building’s nice, but it’s got a lot of problems too,” he said, using his best imitation of a grown-up tone.
“After all, if you can buy a house, you shouldn’t buy a loft apartment.”
There were too many yaoguai in this building, too much noise, the units were small.
Any yaoguai who could afford to rent something better or buy a place would move out.
Sang Zhao nodded.
Got it.
“Then why’s it pushed to next year?” he asked.
Just mentioning it was enough to make even calm, rational Border Collie Teacher sound annoyed.
His back teeth clenched.
He was silent for a moment, then slowly started talking.
Other yaoguai might move out to rent somewhere, but he was different.
He was capable, so when he moved out, it was because he’d bought a new home.
Buying a new place meant renovations, of course.
And that was where all the anger he hadn’t felt in thirty years had exploded at once.
He’d gotten so mad that even rabbits would have been impressed by the sheer volume.
Even back when he’d been just a border collie, he’d been very good at expressing himself to humans.
Now that he was human, his human speech was perfectly clear.
So if his instructions were that clear, how could the designer and the construction crew still not understand him?
Where, exactly, was the problem?
They’d agreed on a certain board for the cabinets, but the boards they used were wrong.
They’d agreed on a certain paint color for the walls, but the color they’d actually used was off.
He’d said he wanted smaller tiles, so of course they’d delivered these giant ones, big enough that two panels could cover an entire wall.
It looked like he was renovating a public restroom.
Was this really his new house? Was the design style supposed to be public restroom chic?
Border Collie Teacher had been spending all his time arguing with the renovation team.
The project had been delayed over and over, and the move had to be pushed back too.
He was exhausted, mentally and emotionally.
“Look, just look. Are my standards really that high? The wall clearly isn’t even straight,” he said.
He pulled out his phone and showed them photos and videos he’d taken at the new place.
Sang Zhao leaned in for a closer look.
Whoa.
The partition wall really wasn’t straight.
It was obviously dented and warped here and there, curving all over the place.
“It’s really bent,” he said, nodding. “More bent than me.”
Border Collie Teacher went speechless for a second.
“…Mm. No, not quite.”
“If the wall in my new place really bent so far it turned gay, that’s when I’d bite someone,” he said.
Author’s Note:
Short little juan!
I still haven’t finished what I have on hand, so I’ll write one more chapter and post it after I’m done~
I’ll try to finish before two a.m. Hehe. I still have to get up at six-thirty for work (sigh).
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