061: Popcorn
Sang Zhao went out to wander for a bit.
He paced up and down the hallway for a while, then went downstairs to the convenience store to buy an ice cream. He sat alone at the bar counter inside the store and quietly finished it.
He took one bite of creamy ice cream and thought, hehe, this little cat really is amazing, Ye Ye is chasing after him trying to become the little cat’s dog.
Another bite, and he thought more seriously, this little cat really is amazing.
Pretending to be human wasn’t all that hard either. Look at him, a little orange cat, and he’d pretended this far without anyone catching on. The little dog even loved him with all four paws.
He hummed a song as he walked back, happily heading upstairs to continue working.
When he came back, he saw Tang Yu standing by his desk. He was just about to say hi when he noticed the look Tang Yu gave him was… very complicated.
“What’s wrong?” Sang Zhao really didn’t understand why Corn Bean was looking at him like that.
That “so I was right,” “unbelievable, I told you to call me, not anyone else” kind of look was so obvious that even a slow little orange cat realized something was off.
Tang Yu didn’t say anything. He just reached out and tapped the phone lying on Sang Zhao’s desk. He pointed at it, went quiet for a moment like he was arranging his words, then said,
“It just lit up. I glanced at it.”
Sang Zhao didn’t mind. Little cats didn’t have a strong sense of privacy about people looking at their phones. Besides, his screen was locked. What could Tang Yu even see? At most, his lockscreen photo of his own paw.
Claws fully extended, sharp and pointed. Even covered in orange fur, it still looked fierce.
If someone saw that, he didn’t care. He actually thought it looked pretty cool.
He didn’t think much of it, but then Tang Yu leaned in closer.
There were coworkers walking past not far away, and to anyone who didn’t know, the two of them were just boss and assistant.
Assistants were absolutely not allowed to kiss their boss on the mouth. The distance between them right now was clearly too close.
Sang Zhao widened his eyes.
What was Corn Bean doing? This wasn’t the president’s office where he could close the door. The secretary’s area was set up outside the office with no door at all, people were coming and going, gossip everywhere. Not exactly ideal for secrecy.
Even the slow little cat brain understood that much, so of course Tang Yu did too.
But Tang Yu still turned his head, leaned close to Sang Zhao’s ear, and whispered,
“Didn’t you give me a collar? Then why is there still a little dog out there?”
His tone carried a tiny touch of grievance. There wasn’t any accusation, but it sounded wronged either way.
“Did I catch your little dog just now?” he added on purpose.
Sang Zhao leaned his upper body back a little and stared at him in shock.
…What was that supposed to mean?
Asking why there was “still” a little dog, and using the word “still”… how else could that be interpreted?
Clearly, ever since he accepted that collar, he’d silently accepted his own made-up fantasy about Sang Zhao’s tastes.
What little dog? What master? There was no little dog here. At this rate, the little cat was going to develop an allergy to the word “dog.”
Wow, he thought, humans who can start their own company and become a president really were built different. This adaptability and acceptance level was impressive.
“No matter what you saw just now, it’s not what you’re thinking,” Sang Zhao took a deep breath and started explaining.
Tang Yu made a thoughtful sound. “Hmm.” He kept that “I’m thinking about it” look on his face, clearly not fully convinced.
That did it.
Sang Zhao was about to jump. “Really! I…”
He lowered his voice, darted glances all around like a sneaky cat, peeking left and right for a while.
“Even if this is my first relationship and I don’t have any experience, I’ve seen plenty of romance dramas and movies, okay?” The little cat was very principled. “If I’m in a relationship with you, it’s just with you. I won’t betray you.”
“If you think of me like that, I’m the one who’s upset.” He huffed softly.
Tang Yu said, “I don’t. I wouldn’t think of you like that.”
He was honest. “I just saw someone messaging you, and you didn’t reply. I was only mad because of who that person was. Who does he think he is?”
Sang Zhao: …
No, it wasn’t his turn. But it wasn’t your turn either!
What are you people lining up for, exactly?!
He picked up his phone, saw the unread messages, and realized they were all from the Samoyed.
He gritted his teeth. “It’s Xia Moye.”
He wasn’t sure how much Tang Yu had seen, so after speaking he snuck a look at his expression to see how he would react.
Tang Yu’s reaction was very real. First he looked confused, then remembered something, and finally nodded.
But he still thought for a moment, then raised a brow.
“…Really? You really do act like you’re raising your kid the same way you’d raise a puppy.”
It was weird, completely unexplainable, and even an adult like Tang Yu had trouble dealing with it.
“Raising a kid is raising a kid. Raising a dog is raising a dog. You can’t just mix them together,” Tang Yu muttered seriously.
He still wouldn’t blame Sang Zhao though. “It’s your sister and brother-in-law who are unreliable.”
Even now, after seeing those messages, he insisted it was Xia Moye’s parents who hadn’t done their job.
Had nothing to do with Sang Zhao.
Sang Zhao could see it. He could see this was Tang Yu’s bias in his favor. Even with the messages right in front of him, the very next second Tang Yu calmly separated him from the problem.
“Gege…” he said softly, calling him once in a small voice.
He knew Tang Yu treated him well. So gentle and considerate in every direction.
So when Friday rolled around and Tang Yu invited him over for dinner at his place, he happily agreed.
He’d never been to Tang Yu’s home before.
After work, he sat in the passenger seat listening to soft music, watching the evening rush hour lights outside, mood sky-high.
“What are we eating?” he asked.
Tang Yu was prepared. “Beef and seafood. Don’t you really like shrimp?”
He still remembered how, back when Sang Zhao was sick and he went over to take care of him, he’d cooked a pot of hot noodle soup. Sang Zhao had slurped down the whole pot.
“As for the main, I’ll make hot noodle soup again, okay?”
“Yes!” Sang Zhao cheered.
Tang Yu signaled, changed lanes, and glanced at him, smiling helplessly. But inside he was just as happy. The more he saw Sang Zhao excited, the more he couldn’t stop smiling.
“Why are you always so happy?” he asked.
He himself was clearly in a great mood, but he still had to pretend.
It was hard to explain for Sang Zhao.
He didn’t know how to put his feelings into words. He just felt light. He was sitting in the car, going to Tang Yu’s house, only thinking about fun things, with no extra worries hanging over his head.
“I don’t know. I just feel like it’s worth being happy about,” he said. “Look, I have a job, I have a boyfriend, I have friends, I have food, and I have a place to live. Everything’s great. What else am I supposed to do besides be happy?”
He sounded so justified.
Tang Yu laughed, quietly sighing.
For all the little worries in his life, Sang Zhao was still such an easily satisfied kid.
From Tang Yu’s point of view, he had plenty of things to stress over: his position at work, future career plans, further education. His place was small. He was always riding the subway, running between part-time jobs. That morning, his breakfast soy milk had spilled all over his shirt. He didn’t even get a sip, and he had to go to the restroom to wash the front of his clothes.
Life wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. He did have a lot of little annoyances.
But now, sitting in his passenger seat, he was lively and smiling, eyes bright and full of life.
And that was exactly what Tang Yu loved about him: that he kept living with so much joy and positivity.
He drove him into the underground garage at his place, parked the car, then came up with him to look at the house from the front.
Sang Zhao was already turning his head everywhere. “It’s a villa. And you even have a little yard in front!”
There was a small courtyard, and in it was the grass Tang Yu had rushed out to buy and lay down after hearing what Sang Zhao said last time. The kind that grew under a Mediterranean climate, the kind used on football fields, long blades full of life.
When he’d hired people to install and maintain it, he had thought: He’ll love this.
Sure enough, Sang Zhao crouched on the stone path, touched the turf, and lit up. “Wow, this is really fluffy grass!”
His eyes shone as he crouched there, then he turned back, tilting his head up to look at Tang Yu.
“It’s the kind of grass you’d play chase on,” he said.
Tang Yu shrugged. “All right. Chase games. Got it.”
He really did not want to be playing chase. Two grown men in the yard, you chase me, I chase you… what was fun about that?
He rubbed his chin, touched the bridge of his nose, and thought about that picture again.
Actually, if he replaced those two idiots in his imagination with himself and Sang Zhao, even something that stupid started to seem pretty fun.
He could already hear a voice in his head.
“Your Majesty, come chase me…” Something like that.
Sang Zhao took a few laps on the grass, then ran back and forth a few more times, and it took a ton of self-control for him not to turn into a cat and roll on his back.
It wasn’t just puppies who liked fluffy grass. This dreamlike lawn was heaven for any little animal. He really wanted to flop down and roll around, rolling and rolling while turning his head to bite the blades, nibbling on them two at a time.
Cats ate grass. That was just how the world worked. On a lawn like this, a cat was supposed to run around and snack on the greenery.
But he was at Tang Yu’s house. No way would Tang Yu let him graze.
Inside the villa, the first floor was the main hall, kitchen, and laundry room. The second had a study, a lounge, and several guest rooms. The third floor had the master bedroom and a gym.
There were also some extra recreation rooms: a private theater, a game room, storage, and so on.
Tang Yu took him to the kitchen first, got some drinks and snacks out of the fridge, then showed him around.
“For a villa, this is pretty low-spec,” he said when they finished.
Sang Zhao tilted his head at him.
No way. He was living in the Bureau-allocated dorms, a two-level loft with barely fifty or sixty square meters total. If he needed the bathroom in the middle of the night, he had to go up and down stairs. Or turn into a cat and leap off the upper floor onto the dining table, then dart to the bathroom.
The only other person he knew who lived in a villa was his previous owner, his cat mom, Yang Shengzhao.
She had only gotten her villa after working from eighteen onward for years and years.
Even the incredibly capable Teacher Border Collie only bought a regular apartment, not a villa.
Tang Yu had built a company and already bought a villa, and now he was here calling it “low-spec”?
If he was hinting that he was impressive, he was doing a pretty bad job of it.
He really wasn’t being sarcastic though; he was genuinely a bit down.
He even dropped his gaze, took Sang Zhao’s hand, and said, “I’m sorry.”
Sang Zhao blinked. “Sorry for what? Gege, what’s wrong?”
Tang Yu had his own twisted logic.
“Look, if I’d worked harder earlier, maybe I could’ve bought a villa with a bigger yard. Or a bigger house. Or one with a back garden and not just a small front yard…”
Once he started, he couldn’t stop. He used “more” and “bigger” and “better” over and over before finally looking at him, full of regret.
“I just feel like you deserve better. I should be giving you something better.”
That, he understood.
It was a very human mindset.
Like when a human bought freeze-dried snacks for their cat and still felt guilty for not buying something even more expensive. Or when the cat was happily playing with a cheap feather toy, and the human regretted not buying a fancier one.
His mom had been like that too.
So now, looking at the slightly discouraged Tang Yu, he could fully grasp how he felt.
When you loved someone too much, when you cared too much, you always felt like you hadn’t done enough, like what you already had still wasn’t good enough.
Sang Zhao took two steps forward and, without a word, chomped a kiss onto Tang Yu’s cheek.
“Don’t say that. Things are perfect right now,” he said. “If you were one of those people who was just born rich and grew up with a big house, you wouldn’t be half as charming.”
“All your money is money you earned yourself. That’s amazing. Not every human can do that.” He switched up the flattery. “You made money and started a company. You’re already working the hardest you possibly can. No need to be ‘even’ more hardworking.”
And then he threatened him, just to make sure he got the message.
“If you keep talking like that, I’ll kiss you.”
The moment he said it, Tang Yu immediately continued, “Ah, the house really is small. There isn’t even an indoor pool.”
Sang Zhao pounced, grabbed his collar, and kissed and bit him all over again.
They technically came here for dinner, and Tang Yu truly had put in a lot of effort into cooking for him.
His cooking skills were normal, nothing particularly fancy, just solid at-home dishes. But for Sang Zhao, standing in the kitchen with him, watching him cook while he helped on the side and snacked on scraps, felt like absolute happiness.
“Carrot slices,” Tang Yu said, handing some over.
Chomp. Gone.
“Cheese trim,” Tang Yu tossed over.
He liked cheese too, so he ate that as well.
“A small handful of crushed peanuts.” Tang Yu pinched some into his palm.
He ate those too, then licked at Tang Yu’s fingertips, making sure not to miss a single crumb.
Tang Yu had never been big on cooking, but now he got it. Cooking alone was boring. Cooking with a Sang Zhao beside him was amazing.
Whatever he handed over, Sang Zhao ate. And he looked up at him with such bright eyes, like the person cooking was some god of food and fullness descending to bless him.
A god with the power to bestow carrot slices, cheese edges, and tiny bits of peanut crumbs upon him.
Of course, the god said yes.
Tang Yu laughed at his own thoughts.
He made baked black tiger shrimp with cheese, braised beef short ribs in tomato, scallion oil chicken, and a plate of stir-fried greens.
In the end, he didn’t boil any noodle soup. When Sang Zhao saw all the dishes, he decided rice was better, and insisted on eating rice instead of noodles.
So Tang Yu scooped some rice, handed him the cooker pot, and told him to rinse the rice under running water.
Sang Zhao didn’t really like sinks or standing water, but he loved running water. Especially flowing water. That was fun.
Under the faucet, he flicked his fingers back and forth through the stream. Instead of carefully rinsing the rice, he was very seriously… playing with water.
Tang Yu saw him and chuckled. “What are you doing, baby? Don’t play, just fill the pot, swirl it a bit to rinse the rice, pour out the water, and repeat a few times.”
That “baby” came out of nowhere, crisp and sudden, and it immediately softened the little cat.
If Tang Yu had snapped at him not to play with the water, he would’ve bristled. But since Tang Yu stroked him the right way, he took it to heart and started rinsing the rice properly.
For his first time rinsing rice, he did a great job. After he finished, he put the pot back into the cooker and tugged Tang Yu over.
“Gege, you press the button, you press,” he urged.
Tang Yu thought he was just acting cute, the kind of “I worked hard rinsing the rice, so come look at me” kind of cute. He loved it, and he was secretly delighted as he walked over, pressed the button, and praised him. “You’re amazing.”
He had no idea that the real reason was that Sang Zhao didn’t know how to use the rice cooker at all. Staring at the two rows of buttons, seven in total, plus a whole row of Chinese characters, had left him completely lost.
Once Tang Yu pressed it, he finally relaxed.
Annoying. When he’d first moved into his apartment, the Bureau had given him lessons on how to use basic household appliances. Back then he actually knew how to use a rice cooker.
But he’d only been using the washing machine regularly. The rice cooker knowledge had faded completely.
He took a breath and secretly made a decision. Things weren’t the same as before. Now he had a human boyfriend. They’d be spending more and more time together. He couldn’t keep forgetting things like this.
His desire to learn perked up again. Little cats might only be motivated in bursts and lazy the rest of the time, but right now his motivation was soaring. He wanted to take classes again, maybe go home and start online courses tonight.
Then he heard Tang Yu, sounding casual, as if it was nothing, say, “It’s getting late. Once we finish eating it’ll be about nine. It’s really far from here to your place. What are we going to do?”
“How far?” Sang Zhao asked.
Tang Yu poked at the pot of stewing short ribs. “Driving, maybe two or three hours?”
Sang Zhao had no concept of distance, mapping, or driving time. But just because he lacked common sense didn’t mean he was actually dumb.
“Don’t I live in Jiangyuan City?” he asked, baffled. “Did I move out of town without noticing?”
Tang Yu cleared his throat. “You know how traffic is.”
“Oh,” Sang Zhao said.
Then he said the exact sentence Tang Yu had been waiting for, the one he’d been dreaming of ever since he made up his mind.
“Then can I stay here tonight? Your place is big, and you have lots of rooms.”
Tang Yu nodded with perfect calm. “Sure.”
“So when you showed me around earlier, didn’t you say there were a bunch of guest bedrooms on the second floor? I can sleep in any of them,” Sang Zhao said.
“Oh, those,” Tang Yu replied, face unchanged. “Nobody uses them. The sheets and quilts are all dusty. You can’t sleep there.”
“It’s fine,” Sang Zhao said.
He waved it off. He was a cat. He could curl up on a bay window and sleep just fine. It wasn’t like he needed freshly washed bedding.
Tang Yu just nodded and fell silent. Sang Zhao thought the matter was settled. He had no idea that Tang Yu had more tricks prepared.
After dinner, they put the dishes into the dishwasher and put the leftovers into the fridge.
Then they went to the home theater and watched an old movie together.
The entire time, Tang Yu was obviously distracted. It was like he wasn’t even watching.
When the end credits finally rolled, he couldn’t wait to say, “I have a popcorn machine set up in my bedroom. Do you want to come see it?”
Sang Zhao dragged himself out of the movie plot and heard that question.
He was full of question marks. “…You put a popcorn machine in your bedroom?”
Tang Yu didn’t blink. “Yeah.”
“You can go shower, then come to my room and I’ll show you how the popcorn machine works,” he said.
“I have to shower too?” Sang Zhao asked, stunned.
“It’s like one of those movie theater popcorn machines,” Tang Yu explained, and then started talking nonsense. “But the one I bought is, um, more… special. You can come see it after you shower.”
“Is that so…”
“Are you…” Sang Zhao stared at him for a while. Under Tang Yu’s shifty gaze, he suddenly smiled. “Okay.”
The theater was dark, so Tang Yu couldn’t see his expression clearly. But night-cat eyes were sharp. Sang Zhao could see every little detail.
He saw Tang Yu’s eyes dart and avoid his. Saw his shoulder tremble. Saw his eyelashes, fluttering lightly like butterfly wings.
He also saw the bob of his throat, and the way his lips pressed together.
Maybe it was the romance of the film they’d just watched. Maybe it was the way Teacher Border Collie’s words had sunk in.
Whatever it was, he thought: since he’d chosen to live as a person, he should do what humans did.
Don’t waste springtime, right?
“I really like you, Corn Bean,” he murmured, scooting closer and kissing the corner of his lips.
“So you don’t have to wait around, silly, hoping spring will come someday. Maybe our spring is already here, isn’t it? Maybe it’s already come, and maybe it never will again…”
He said a string of things that left Tang Yu completely confused.
But then he leaned in and softly licked the side of Tang Yu’s neck. That was all the signal his body needed; his tailbone practically shivered.
“We’re both small,” Sang Zhao said quietly. “So all we can do is cherish the time we have.”
Tang Yu didn’t really understand. His head felt hazy.
But he had enough sense to say, “I’ll go turn off the lights.”
Sang Zhao looked around. “The lights aren’t on.”
“Oh.” Tang Yu hurriedly corrected himself. “Then I’ll go shower.”
A low laugh rumbled in Sang Zhao’s chest. “Okay. See you in the bedroom. Don’t forget to bring your popcorn machine.”
“I want to see the popcorn pop.”
0 Comments