067: Accepting All of You
Sang Zhao snuggled against Tang Yu for a while.
He looked at the healthy flush on Tang Yu’s face and felt ridiculously pleased, full of that smug, fizzy feeling of first love. Mainly, he was very satisfied with himself this time. He felt like he’d been so smart.
It had been really hard for him to memorize that poem, but he’d still tried so hard. Just thinking about how, if he really managed to memorise it, Tang Yu would be so happy when he heard it, that alone was enough to give the little cat loads of motivation.
With that kind of motivation, the little cat crammed and crammed, and finally, the little cat pulled it off.
He’d just finished reciting it, and now, looking at the shine in Tang Yu’s eyes, the little cat could happily show off his own intelligence.
Sang Zhao said cheerfully, “Sounds good, right? See, I just knew you like Spanish. I followed videos online and memorized it. Look at you, you liked it so much you kept kissing me.”
Seriously, this Corn Bean sure liked Spanish too much. He liked it so much that just from hearing one Spanish poem, his face was still flushed from excitement.
Tang Yu: “...?”
Tang Yu was briefly speechless.
He gave a helpless little laugh, sighed, and admitted that yes, he really did quite like Spanish. Especially Spanish love poetry recited by Sang Zhao, that was even more powerful.
But he still hinted, “Actually it doesn’t have to be just Spanish. English, French, Mandarin all work too.”
The main thing was this attitude of loving to learn. What was wrong with rote memorization? All knowledge was memorized at first. As long as you were willing to cram, slowly you would learn things.
Give it time, help him build up this interest in learning, and Tang Yu would have himself a genius top-student little cat.
But Sang Zhao did not understand Tang Yu’s good intentions. Or rather, he really lived up to being Tang Yu’s boyfriend, because he saw straight through Tang Yu.
He dragged out an “Ooh” and said, “Spanish, English, French, Mandarin, as long as it’s sweet talk, it all works, right?”
Eh, what was this, greedy Corn Bean.
Tang Yu cleared his throat, his gaze drifted aside for a moment, but he still nodded in a restrained way.
How bad could Corn Bean’s intentions be? He just wanted to hear more sweet words, that was all.
He just wanted to spend more time with Sang Zhao, that was all. Because lately he and Sang Zhao really had too little time together. After work, Sang Zhao didn’t wait for Tang Yu to finish overtime and leave together, and he didn’t eat dinner with Tang Yu or stay to chat much anymore.
They were clearly still an affectionate little couple, so how had things ended up like this? Who had stolen away the couple’s time?
It was the Pallas Cat, it was the side gig, it was Sang Zhao’s enthusiastic little entrepreneurial plan.
Tang Yu wasn’t against Sang Zhao doing part-time work. It was just that... as far as this particular side job went, it had been great before. It could supplement his own spending, all good. But now that he wanted to take it bigger, and had even pulled Pallas Cat in with him, Tang Yu instinctively felt this was getting a bit off.
Sang Zhao didn’t think so. He felt that now he had a teammate, his own “crew” had expanded, which obviously meant he’d improved.
He happily popped one of the fruit candies Tang Yu handed him into his mouth. With the candy in his cheek, his words were a little mushy, but he still chattered away, full of excitement about his little business.
Around his neck hung the gold collar Tang Yu had bought for him.
He had no idea about gold prices, nor how expensive that thing really was.
Wearing something so pricey, he excitedly told Tang Yu about his ten-kuai, eight-kuai jobs.
“I’m doing it together with Pallas Cat now. I used to work alone, but since he lost his job, I dragged him in with me. He and the car joined together, so that’s two veteran employees right there.”
Tang Yu thought back to that truly shocking junker of a car.
Ah, that car. That car where he’d watched Sang Zhao climb into the passenger seat, and instinctively worried for his little cat’s safety.
Tang Yu raised his brows. “You mean that Jetta that looks like it was halfway through a shredder at the scrapyard when you rescued it back to the human world?”
Sang Zhao nodded and actually seemed a little displeased at Tang Yu’s prejudice toward the car.
“Yeah, what about Car-Car, Car-Car can run. If it can run, then it’s a car.”
What do you mean “if it can run, it’s a car”? Tang Yu complained internally. A kettle can boil too, so how come you and that fluffy big cat aren’t riding a kettle around town doing in-home grooming and washing cats?
Still, since this was about starting a business and making money, all that was secondary.
The most important question was how much they were actually earning.
Tang Yu asked how much they’d made. After all, the whole point of this side gig was to make money. You had to at least look at the input-output ratio, right?
The result was that Sang Zhao said he didn’t know. He couldn’t figure it out. He only knew that ever since he started the side gig, he’d had more and more money, but exactly how much he’d earned, he had no idea.
Tang Yu took one look and thought: unbelievable.
How could there be a situation where someone was doing business and making money, but the moment they made the money, they just spent it, without knowing how much they actually had?
So Tang Yu asked to see his income, wanting to help him do the math.
He compared the platform orders to the WeChat and Alipay payments, subtracted the necessary costs, like the initial bucket and apron, and now the money to feed the wheezing car, which meant fuel.
Then Tang Yu arrived at a terrifying conclusion.
Now that they had a car and an extra pair of hands, their profits were actually worse than when Sang Zhao had taken the subway alone.
Back then, taking the subway, he could freeload off the Yao Bureau’s card, and his public transportation was effectively free. The only thing that could be considered “expenses” was the occasional grilled sausage he bought at the station.
And now? Now look at them.
Now his little partnership with Pallas Cat had way higher costs. Sure, with another helper they could take more jobs, but now the profits had to be split with Tu Sun, and the car needed gas.
That junker gulped fuel, and Pallas Cat didn’t know anything about planning routes. In the daytime he’d drive from south of the city to the north to bathe one cat, making a mighty sixty kuai, then go all the way east to walk a dog and proudly earn forty-five.
Tang Yu stared at the numbers on the calculator and felt faint.
He didn’t say a word. He just lunged forward and pulled the little cat into his arms, rubbing his orange hair hard.
Tang Yu truly felt distressed.
“How is it that the harder my little cat works, the more he suffers?” he cried.
Seriously, this was ridiculous. How could someone be so clueless that the harder they worked, the less they earned, and the harder they tried, the more bitter their life got?
But, he was the little cat’s boyfriend. He was biased. He wasn’t going to blame it on the cat’s own decision-making. He thought, look, when Sang Zhao ran the side gig alone, it had been going just fine. He wasn’t overworked, and he made decent money. Why wasn’t it working now? Could that be Sang Zhao’s fault?
No. It must be Pallas Cat’s fault.
Obviously, when Sang Zhao ran it himself, he’d understood it pretty well. Now that it had turned into a messy money-losing ordeal, clearly it was because of Tu Sun.
Tang Yu got so angry he started trash-talking Pallas Cat.
“The first time I saw him, I knew he wasn’t a good person. And now, heh, sure enough, he’s not a good cat either.”
Eh, when he said that, Tang Yu hadn’t realized anything, but the gears in clever little Sang Zhao’s head started turning.
Why did that sound so wrong?
The more he listened, the more off it sounded. “The first time you saw him? Didn’t you say you only met him for the first time a few days ago? You met him before that?”
Tang Yu’s gaze tightened.
Ah. Right. Seeing Tu Sun in the apartment was not the actual first time.
He’d already seen him once back when he’d secretly followed Sang Zhao and An Tihu.
That had been the real first meeting.
And he’d misunderstood him right at that first meeting. Once he put the face and the name together, it was hard not to have a bad impression.
Now, looking at the confusion in Sang Zhao’s eyes, Tang Yu suddenly didn’t know how to explain.
Tang Yu fell into conflict.
How on earth was he supposed to explain... that he’d been following him?
At the time, their relationship hadn’t been as close as it was now, yet he’d gone and trailed after him.
He couldn’t undo what he’d done, and the truth was, he didn’t even regret it... but still, dredging it up now felt embarrassing.
Wouldn’t the little cat think his possessiveness was way too strong?
Back then, he really had been carried away. He’d barely thought before following the car.
He’d even gone down to the apartment complex at five in the morning to wait, just to see when the little cat came out, and where he was going.
...Even though he was the one who’d done it, right now he also thought that past version of himself was rather obsessive... and kind of a creep.
Love and being creepy sometimes looked very similar. It was truly making one speechless.
Still, since Sang Zhao had asked, Tang Yu didn’t want to lie to him. He was the little cat’s boyfriend now, and he wanted to love him with his whole heart.
Just like in the poem the little cat had memorized with that tiny cat brain.
Treat him like a rose in your palm, don’t let him wither. Let a spring well up and water the soil of his soul, let them grow together like a single tree.
This was Tang Yu’s first relationship, his first time falling in love with a little cat, and he decided to cut open his slightly twisted heart and show it to this soft orange ball.
Come on, he thought. Be straightforward. Let the little cat flip through a human’s cowardly heart with his pink strawberry paws.
So he stumbled through his confession about following him.
At the end, Tang Yu lowered his head a little and said softly, “I’m sorry.”
By the time Sang Zhao finished listening, his head was spinning.
He genuinely could not understand how there was a person who, on a weekend, would not be sleeping at five in the morning, not even staying up until five, but actually already standing downstairs at five, just so he could escort him to a reservoir to go fishing.
He felt, huh? This Corn Bean had a really strong sense of ownership.
It was like there was only one little cat in the whole world.
Sang Zhao scratched his own cheek, lowered his head to pick at his fingertips, glanced around, then finally met Tang Yu’s anxious gaze.
He was trying not to laugh.
Honestly, he wasn’t mad at all.
He didn’t have human moral concepts, so he didn’t feel his “privacy” had been invaded or think they needed to have a big fight about it.
The little cat’s thinking was straightforward. He didn’t have extra loops built into his mental track, so he didn’t overthink it.
So no, the little cat wasn’t afraid of Tang Yu’s possessiveness. The little cat just felt bad for Gege.
“It must’ve been really tiring to wait that long, huh?”
He grabbed Tang Yu’s wrist and kneaded it a few times, then pulled Tang Yu’s hand up against his own cheek.
He buried his face into Tang Yu’s palm, tilting his head so Tang Yu could cup his face and clearly see his clear, bright eyes.
Tang Yu said, “So you’ve forgiven me?”
Sang Zhao dove straight into his arms, rubbing and rubbing. It was like he wasn’t human at all, just a little cat who wanted to burrow through the collar of his shirt and curl up inside.
That movement said everything, more than any polite words could.
The little cat did not blame him. The little cat didn’t care about all that. The little cat only cared about you.
Later, he told Pallas Cat to drive the eight-hand Jetta less, and followed the route map Tang Yu had drawn up, carefully picking which orders to take and planning a proper route.
According to Tang Yu, this was called upgrading and improving.
It wasn’t such a ramshackle operation anymore, and looked much more professional.
Sang Zhao thought he’d just keep going like this with Tang Yu, happily in love. On weekdays he’d find excuses to go up to the president’s office. If Tang Yu was busy, he’d eat the fruit from the guest fruit plate. After work, on days when he wasn’t doing side gigs, they’d eat dinner together.
After dinner, they usually went back to Tang Yu’s villa, and occasionally they’d go back to Sang Zhao’s apartment, walking Ye Ye in the park, letting him finally experience the wild, carefree doggy life he dreamed of.
But things always came suddenly.
One day.
On his way downstairs to buy oden at the convenience stand, Sang Zhao was caught by Director Li.
He immediately felt guilty. He was slacking off during work hours, and not only slacking off, but sneaking out to eat oden. In front of Director Li, the one who’d worked to place him in this company... wasn’t that basically saying he wasn’t working properly at all, and had let her down?
He glanced down at the paper bowl in his hands. The radish inside was soft and tender, the fish cakes were giving off a heavy, delicious smell, and he’d piled in several types of balls, the bowl heaped up to a little hill.
Director Li wore a black administrative jacket zipped up to her collarbones.
She looked at him and smiled slightly. “It’s alright, you eat first.”
He couldn’t eat it yet anyway. He was a cat tongue, so he was afraid of the heat and had to let it cool.
The two of them sat on a bench downstairs from the office building. Sang Zhao set the oden on his knees.
No one was nearby. When Director Li saw he wasn’t eating, she began to speak at a slow pace.
“I was the one who accepted you little cat for placement, so I’m the one directly responsible for you.” Her voice was very gentle.
But when she got to this point, her tone got heavier.
“Since I’m responsible for you, how come you can start dating a human and not tell me anything?”
Every hair on his body stood on end.
If he’d had a full coat of fur right now, he’d be puffed up all over.
He was one step away from arching his back and hissing. He was on high alert. “Who told you?”
His little cat brain was already running through suspects. The first one that popped up was An Tihu, his designated handler at work.
She had a record. Last time when Tang Yu picked up the Samoyed dog yaoguai, she’d immediately called Director Li.
But this time, the little cat was wrongfully suspicious of the big-mouthed bird.
An Tihu had not reported it. She’d actually helped hide it for a while. Not because she was that supportive of the romance, but because she still had her old opinion: this wouldn’t last long. No need to bother the director.
No point telling Director Li. For all she knew, they might break up soon anyway. It was just a relationship, not marriage.
The big-mouthed bird had been in human society a long time and seen a lot. Her life experience in the human world was overflowing.
Director Li gave him a sideways look. “If you didn’t want me to know, then at least block me from your Moments. It’s been four months. You’ve been pretending to be human four months, and you’re going to tell me you still don’t know how to use friend groups and block lists on your Moments? Did you sleep through your WeChat lesson?”
Silently, Sang Zhao opened the plastic bag covering his oden and picked up a piece of radish to eat.
“You took a picture of your boyfriend from behind, and let me see what you wrote. Let me check your typos. ‘He made me “stew flip tomato soup.”’ Tell me, is the ‘fan’ in ‘tomato’ really the ‘flip over’ fan? Once you fall in love, everything is different, huh. Even your boyfriend’s tomatoes have to flip and roll around.”
The smile on her face was so perfectly standard that it made his heart shrink.
“I saw it back then. I just didn’t say anything, because I went on field work to Jiangxi to pick up a monkey that broke into someone’s bedroom.”
Just mentioning it brought up the pain of overtime. “You should be able to see the sanitized news about it later. The monkey breaking into a bedroom and snatching freshly washed quilts, that was exciting enough. The monkey turning human, wrapped in the quilt and walking around the street, even more exciting...”
She caught herself. “Where was I? Sorry, I went off on a tangent.”
Director Li looked at him eating his fish cake, and patted him on the shoulder.
“I’m the one who placed you here, so I’m responsible. What were you planning on doing, anyway? Finally tell me when you two got married and mail me an invitation?”
...So since she was here, she decided to handle everything all at once.
That was why she was now sitting in the president’s office talking to Tang Yu.
Tang Yu actually felt a little awkward seeing her.
It was that feeling of “someone from the same tier of responsibility handed me a kid to take care of, and I just played around with the kid and then started sleeping with him.”
Good thing the cat had spent twenty years as a pet first, then became human and counted as an adult. Otherwise Tang Yu really was afraid Director Li might arrest him.
Because of that, he was very polite with her, almost like he was meeting the future mother-in-law.
Tang Yu was very attentive and courteous, but this mother-in-law was not easy to please.
After a sip of tea, Director Li got straight to the point. “To be honest, I don’t think Sang Zhao is really suited for your company. I’ll be transferring him to a different placement.”
She just came out and said it.
That one sentence shattered Tang Yu’s little fantasy.
He panicked.
But this man had worked his way up from a corporate grunt, step by step, to being the president. He’d eaten more hardship than most. A tiny bit of pressure like this was nothing to him. He never talked about quitting or “knowing when to stop.”
On the contrary, when he saw how forceful she was, the sharper side of him came out too.
With a polite smile, he picked up his phone and said, “Let’s leave that aside for a moment. I doubt you’re used to this tea. I’ll have the secretary’s office prepare a hand-poured coffee for you.”
Sang Zhao wanted to speak, but one look from Tang Yu stopped him.
So the room sat in that awkward silence until An Tihu came in with the coffee pot.
She walked very carefully, carrying the pot, and kept sneaking glances at them. As she tipped the pot to pour into Director Li’s cup, Tang Yu let out a soft laugh.
In a friendly tone, he said, “Director Li thinks it’s not suitable for Sang Zhao to keep working here. Sister An, what do you think?”
An Tihu froze.
Tang Yu said, “Sister An, don’t just stand there. Director, it’s a bit cold in here. Maybe someone could stand on their hands and help you hold an umbrella?”
“And as for our sales people, they can stop running client visits for now. I’ve got a fruit platter over there, very suitable for someone to gnaw raw meat off like a bone.”
Sang Zhao stared at Tang Yu, eyes round.
He’d always thought Tang Yu was gentle, but he’d never seen him like this, with such a sharp, sarcastic edge.
What was going on? Had his gentle Corn Bean mutated?
Was this what Tang Yu was like in front of outsiders, and “Corn Bean” was just the limited-edition version?
Director Li had been front-line enforcement for eight years. She’d seen enough of everything. A bit of veiled threat and sharpness like this didn’t move her at all. She stayed calm, her presence steady and reliable.
She patted the cushion next to her and let the about-to-blow-her-top An Tihu sit down.
From Tang Yu’s attitude, she understood immediately that he’d pretty much guessed everything.
Her mood never wavered. Sitting there, she just made people feel she was composed and trustworthy.
Director Li started talking openly. “These yaoguai are not what you think they are. They don’t have any special spells or powers, and they’re not like the creatures in the stories we read as kids, with all sorts of strange abilities.”
“Once they take human form, they don’t even have that old instinct of ‘playing dead and searching for their owner’ anymore, and their lifespan’s the same as humans.”
“The only real difference is their inner sea. You can understand it as being like a personal pocket space. They can store some things there, but only a tiny amount. Your suitcase holds more than their inner sea does.”
She went on, “Being able to transform into human form just means they lucked out. Other than that, their souls are the same as ours.”
She watched as Tang Yu lowered his eyes and quietly reached over to take Sang Zhao’s hand.
There was no doubt they genuinely liked and relied on each other.
But Director Li had seen too much. She had to do her job. She was here to remind, to warn.
The Yao Bureau’s stance wasn’t to break couples up. It was just that they’d seen too many cases that didn’t end well, and they didn’t want the little monsters to get hurt.
If they got hurt, the chances of them posing a threat to society went up. That was absolutely not allowed.
Director Li sighed. “I’ve been in the Yao Bureau for twelve years now, and eight of those were in front-line action. I’ve seen plenty of love stories, and most of them end badly.”
“Half of the couples never confess the truth at all, because the truth behind their sincerity is too much for most people’s worldview. And as for the ones who do tell, well, there are plenty of humans who can’t accept it. And plenty more who accept it, but because they’re scared, don’t dare break up. So they turn to cold violence instead.”
“These yaoguai are not very smart, but they’re strong, and they’re very sincere. They’re extremely cute.” Her voice dropped. “But they are not suitable partners for humans.”
Lover, lover. If your lover isn’t human, can they still be a human’s lover?
When Tang Yu finished listening, he did not feel any of the emotions she expected.
Instead, he actually looked a little guilty at first, then his eyes lit up, startlingly bright.
“I’m honored,” Tang Yu said, very firmly.
Even Director Li was surprised. “So you accept it? You accept all of it?”
“Of course,” Tang Yu said without hesitation. “From the tips of his ears to the tip of his tail, I accept every bit.”
Director Li went quiet for a moment, and realized all the comforting lines she’d prepared were useless.
She’d done a bunch of work for nothing. Technically she should be tired, but she wasn’t.
She just lifted her brows and smiled. “Actually, I’m quite happy to see that.”
Sang Zhao understood. He let out a cheer and leaned in to kiss Tang Yu’s lips.
Director Li’s brows snapped together and her mouth pulled down. She immediately looked away, her voice twisting. “Oh, uh, yeah... that wasn’t what I wanted to see.”
Author’s Note:
The little cat: When it comes to cursing someone out, my vocabulary is especially rich. I deserve a thumbs up!
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