070: Hide-and-Seek
Tang Yu, still upside down, petted the cat for a while with his big head hanging off the bed.
He was almost bursting with happiness. But after scratching the little cat’s head for a bit, he had to struggle back up and stop.
It wasn’t that the cat had suddenly become less cute, or that he’d gotten tired of him. It was because all his blood was rushing to his brain.
…Petting a cat came with health risks.
A cat this cute was a huge temptation for any human. Use the wrong posture while petting, and it was very bad for your circulation.
Tang Yu crawled back onto the bed. Since he’d stopped attacking the curtains, Sang Zhao hopped back over, bounced up along the edge of the mattress, and landed on Tang Yu’s legs to sit neatly.
“How come you woke up and immediately started scratching the bedroom curtains?” Tang Yu asked.
Sang Zhao thought about it carefully. Honestly, the cat didn’t know either. He just felt that… if the curtains were hanging there like that, what else were they for?
They were for cats to scratch.
“And also…” he began, hesitating. “Sometimes when I look at my paws…”
He lifted his paw like an elementary school kid raising his hand to answer a question, holding it right up to Tang Yu’s face.
Tang Yu stared at his orange paw as he finished, “I look down and see my paws all fluffy, and it just feels like a waste not to scratch something.”
“Cute paws just really want to scratch things.” His voice was guilty, but his expression was stubborn as he held the paw up for inspection.
See, see, the cat wasn’t lying. With paws this fluffy, who could resist scratching the curtains a little?
Tang Yu lifted his hand and squeezed the paw. It was springy and soft. Pressing along the gaps between his toes felt like pressing a hidden switch, and all the cat’s claws popped out.
The cat’s weapons on full display, enough to strike fear in any human heart.
Now that he’d been dating the little cat for a while, Tang Yu really wanted to meet his friends.
A cat’s social circle was different from a human’s. All his friends were interesting, and none of them were human.
Even when you were dating a cat, you still got all the usual human-relationship instincts. Being introduced to your partner’s friends, being brought into their circle, that was how you knew the relationship was solid and serious.
That was how you knew things were really moving forward.
None of that existed in Sang Zhao’s cat brain. He’d only been “pretending to be human” for a little over four months. All his friends were people he’d met in that short time.
Of course, Sister An had taken good care of him at the beginning, taking him out to eat. The black panther was always asking him to hang out. Ye Ye kept feeding him snacks, and he’d helped Ye Ye out of a few scrapes.
Those really were friends, but not the years-deep “if you’re introduced to them, it means we’re really serious” kind of friend group Tang Yu was imagining.
The cat himself didn’t care. It was just that Tang Yu really did.
According to Sang Zhao’s thinking, he could send the big cats a warning in advance and ask if they wanted to meet his human boyfriend. The big cats would probably be delighted. They loved crowding around any lively scene.
Once they said yes and it wouldn’t affect their own “pretending to be human” jobs, they could just pick a chance sometime. Maybe drop by the lynx’s chain supermarket when he was on shift, or have a meal with the black panther, and that would count as a proper introduction.
But that wasn’t what Tang Yu wanted.
“I want to join your group activities,” he said firmly.
Clearly, he still hadn’t forgotten how he hadn’t been invited to the reservoir trip.
That jealousy was long-lasting. He might not even be able to consciously recall it himself, but his subconscious definitely did.
So he wanted to go to a group outing.
Recently, since the big cats were short on money, the group trips weren’t as fancy. No more fishing and eating fresh fish at the reservoir. No more camping and barbecues.
There was only one option left: hiking.
Originally, Sang Zhao hadn’t even wanted to go.
Tang Yu had asked, “Why aren’t you going out with your friends? You used to always go, didn’t you?”
He’d gone limp all over. He just didn’t feel like it.
Mostly he thought it sounded boring. Seeing how excited Tang Yu was, he started beating on his ear with a mental mallet, trying to talk him out of it.
“Let’s not. What’s so fun about hiking, you don’t eat, you don’t play any games.”
He muttered, “We cats don’t get why cats go hiking. Climbing trees makes more sense than climbing mountains.”
Tang Yu glanced at him and immediately saw how unenthusiastic he was.
He paused, then started coaxing.
He pretended to think very seriously, then said, “But when you stand on the peak and look down, isn’t the mountain just a giant cat tree for cats?”
He was very good at smoothing down fluffed-up fur. He’d never kept a cat before, but he was clearly a destined top-tier cat owner.
His voice was full of temptation. “And not every cat gets to have a cat tree that tall.”
Sang Zhao didn’t answer, but his gaze was already wavering.
Tang Yu added, “I know hiking isn’t that interesting. I just want to join your activities and meet your friends. If I can talk with them, then from now on, your friends will be my friends too.”
Head down, eyes rolling around, Sang Zhao was clearly plotting something.
“If we go hiking, I’ll wear a backpack,” Tang Yu said with a smile, delivering the finishing blow. “Do you want to turn into a little cat and hide in my backpack?”
Sang Zhao drew in a deep breath and nodded solemnly.
“I want to,” he said brightly.
Since he’d agreed to Tang Yu’s plan, he brought it up with the big cats when he went to the Bureau to attend class.
He told them the whole backstory, scratched his head, and summed it up as, “So my boyfriend wants to come.”
The big cats all gasped.
“Boyfriend…”
“Human boyfriend,” he stressed.
“Wow… a human…”
Their mouths all fell open and stayed open.
Sang Zhao looked down at the table and snapped his claws to pull them back to reality. “So that’s why I came to ask you guys first, to see if he can come. He really wants to. I think it’s some human thing, where meeting your friends means the relationship is more stable. I don’t really get it.”
The black panther leaned in, narrowed his eyes and scratched his buzz cut once, and answered with great swagger, “No problem!”
“This younger sister-in-law, no, this… in-law… no, bridge-in-law… sister-in-law… uncle… whatever, I can understand Little Orange-sao’s boyfriend’s feelings!”
Sang Zhao frowned. “What are those even supposed to be?”
The black panther waved him off. “Humans need that sense of security. Totally understandable, absolutely understandable. Let him come. We’re just hiking this time, no one planned to turn back into cats and run around anyway. He won’t affect anything.”
So it was decided.
That weekend, Sang Zhao happily stopped being human.
He turned into Little Orange and curled up inside Tang Yu’s backpack. Tang Yu had lined the bottom with a soft, fluffy blanket and tossed in a little ball, so the cat just lay there comfortably.
When Tang Yu met up with the black panther and the others, the panther looked around and asked, “Where’s Sang Zhao? Didn’t he come?”
Tang Yu followed the backstory they’d agreed on and said, “He didn’t. Something came up.”
Inside the backpack, Sang Zhao silently snickered. He was already planning how he’d pop out on the mountaintop to scare the big cats.
No one would be able to guess how he got up the mountain. Who would suspect that Tang Yu’s hiking pack had a little orange cat inside?
Tang Yu carried his cat on his back while chatting with the black panther and the others.
He and the black panther were closest. They were the most familiar with each other.
They were always whispering in the back of the classroom together. Even Tang Yu’s nickname “Corn Bean” had come from one of their chats, when they’d been messing around.
So his first impression of Tang Yu was very good.
“I know you, you’re Corn Bean!” the black panther said excitedly. “You’re that crunchy, very kind staple food!”
He copied the way Sang Zhao talked, making Tang Yu laugh.
Tang Yu nodded and reached a hand back, feeling around the bottom of the pack. He rubbed the cat through the fabric.
The black panther was very loyal. Even though Sang Zhao hadn’t come, his boyfriend had, so he treated Tang Yu like he was just another one of his own friends.
And with friends, you inevitably ended up talking about other friends.
Walking side by side, the panther never stopped talking. He had too much stamina for that.
He complained that work was annoying and his boss unreasonable. He praised how good Sang Zhao’s personality was, and said the little dog they’d brought along last time was also fun.
He mentioned the snow leopard they used to hang out with, who’d been caught by the Bureau.
“He’s off for continuing education, he probably won’t be out for at least a couple of months,” the panther said, sounding like he was long used to this sort of thing.
Tang Yu jumped. “What happened? He got arrested? Do you need a lawyer? I know some good ones.”
The panther shook his head and waved that off as nothing.
“He used his shihai to do daigou for humans,” he explained in a low voice. “You know what daigou is better than we do. Daigou and smuggling are like me and Snow Leopard, one looks black, the other looks white, but at the end of the day we’re both leopards.”
Tang Yu fell silent.
Right. When you had a shihai, a personal space that could store things, and you had the ability to travel, pretty much anyone with the slightest urge to make money would start thinking about daigou.
The black panther continued, “If you’re just doing small daigou on the sly, it’s fine. Our shihai isn’t that big, it can’t hold much. If the amounts stay small, the Bureau turns a blind eye. That’s the little survival margin they leave for us.”
“So Snow Leopard went too big?” Tang Yu asked.
“No, he was buying pineapple cakes,” the panther said. “But he’s really rough when he takes stuff in and out of his shihai. By the time he was done, it was all crumbs. He had no money to compensate, so the Bureau helped pay and then dragged him back for education.”
He added, very bluntly, “It’s fine. He’ll be out after a while. It’s just a sham that I bought several boxes.”
Tang Yu was speechless.
He didn’t know whether to complain about the snow leopard who’d crumbled the pineapple cakes, the black panther who was still obsessed with eating them, or the Bureau, who’d fronted the money for ruined snacks and then hauled the guy in for “education.”
How could this not be entertaining? It felt like everything connected to these little yaoguai had its own kind of fun.
By the time they finally reached the top of the mountain, everyone scattered, wandering, snapping pictures, each busy with their own thing.
At that point, the cat in the backpack could no longer be hidden.
He’d enjoyed the ride. Sitting in the pack, swaying with each step, he’d basically taken a cable car to the top.
But nobody had played with him the whole way. All he’d been able to do was eavesdrop on Tang Yu and the black panther.
On the summit, Tang Yu set the pack on a bench and unzipped it just enough for the cat to poke his head out.
When his little orange head emerged, Tang Yu couldn’t stop smiling. His lips just wouldn’t go down. His voice went soft automatically.
“Are you tired?”
He was lying through his teeth. He’d clearly been utterly carried away by how much he doted on this cat. He’d hiked the whole mountain himself, not saying he was tired, not saying the black panther and the others were tired, and now he was asking if the cat who’d been sitting in a backpack the whole time was tired.
He was completely gone.
But he was happily gone. If being around a cat made him dizzy, he was delighted to stay that way.
Checking him carefully and seeing that the cat was in great shape, he asked, “Hungry? I saw a stand selling sausages in that pavilion over there, do you want me to buy you one?”
The cat nodded very elegantly.
Tang Yu had just turned to go buy a sausage when a voice sounded behind him.
High-pitched, full of disbelief, then, as he turned around, shifting into an awkward greeting.
“Hello… oh, it’s you!”
He turned and saw a young woman approaching.
She was in sportswear, a baseball cap pulled low, bright orange hiking shoes on her feet. She clearly still loved to exercise. Her style was exactly the same as the day he’d first seen her outside the badminton hall.
Yes, Tang Yu knew her.
Under the wide stare of the cat peeking out of the zipper, he spoke her name.
“He Sangchi. I should call you jiejie, right?”
In the pack, head tipping to the side, Sang Zhao grumbled silently.
No, you should call her Mom.
He Sangchi half ran over. When she was still four or five steps away, she forced herself to slow down, then came closer step by careful step.
From the height of the bench, he could just see her hands.
He saw her fingers were trembling.
“Can I see your cat?” she asked Tang Yu. Her voice was pleading. “Your cat looks a lot like the one I used to have.”
Tang Yu glanced from her to the cat and back, then nodded. “Of course.”
Her expression lit up like she’d won the lottery. She bent down, leaned in, and slowly, determinedly held out her hand, fingers curled into a loose fist.
Sang Zhao breathed in her scent. His emotions were complicated. He really wanted to be close to her, so the cat slowly lowered his chin and rested it on the back of her hand.
She held out her fist. On top of it sat the cat’s head.
It was quite possibly the cutest thing on earth. His chin was fluffy, his head round and plump, a small golden-orange, chubby-faced little cat.
Through the gap in the zipper, she could see more of his coat, and let out another sigh.
“My cat looked just like this,” she murmured. “A red tiger-tabby orange cat, not a single white hair on him. A little sun, right?”
She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Tang Yu.
Watching her expression, remembering the badminton hall and what the little cat had said in the café, Tang Yu more or less pieced together what had happened.
Since the cat couldn’t exactly open his mouth and speak human words right now, Tang Yu, as if reading his mind, gently spoke for him.
“Yeah. A little orange cat is like a tiny stove, lively and happy and brave, like a flame that never goes out.”
He watched her stroke the cat’s head with her forearm and said softly, “I think your little cat must be very happy now.”
“He grew up with you. You’re doing so well, so he definitely knows how to take good care of himself.”
As she scratched gently at the cat’s head, he let his gaze fall on the orange crown in front of her fingertips.
“He’s probably still just as orange and fluffy and chubby as ever, eating really well, never letting himself go hungry.”
She’d heard words like this many, many times. But somehow, hearing them now, with a little orange cat under her hand and these words in her ear, it felt different from all the dry comfort before.
Her emotions had already been stirred up when she’d first seen this cat. Now they swelled even more, and a bit of grievance slipped out.
“Then why doesn’t he ever come see me in my dreams?” He Sangchi whispered. “If he’s doing well, if he showed up just once in a dream, I’d feel a little better.”
Tang Yu said, “I think… he’s hoping you’ll remember him, but won’t get stuck in the past. He wants you to be happy too.”
At that, she sighed with a trace of bitterness. “I’m a wild person with no cat now. How can I be happy?”
Still, the comfort had helped a little. When she’d seen orange cats before, she always thought about her own. But no matter how similar they were in color or pattern, none of them had ever looked this similar.
Fluffed up like a dandelion puff, even his expression was the same.
Seeing one so alike, her feelings had inevitably surged. But after petting him for a while, she calmed down a bit and started making small talk with Tang Yu.
“That boy who was with you before, the one with the orange hair, the one my cat supposedly visited in a dream, where is he?”
Tang Yu lifted his brows. “He’s busy, so he didn’t come.”
“If you really believe in dreams, maybe you should look at my cat some more,” he suggested. “The more you look, the more likely you’ll dream of him tonight.”
He Sangchi stared. “Would that still count as a dream?”
Tang Yu made a thoughtful noise. “Then maybe dreams are really expensive. Maybe cats have to save up to send one. He saved up once, and then found the wrong person. Now he’s probably working very hard somewhere.”
She’d just been complaining that her cat never came to see her. Now she backtracked.
“He doesn’t have to work hard,” she said. “It’s fine if he never comes. I’ve suffered through enough work already, he shouldn’t have to.”
She stroked the cat’s ears carefully.
While she and Corn Bean talked, the cat kept his head tipped up, staring straight at her. Their last meeting had been far, far less close than this.
Only now, being this close, felt right. He could really study her face, see how she’d matured in ten years, notice the little habits she hadn’t lost.
His way of saying hello and goodbye was to press his cheek against his mom’s wrist.
Once she left, Tang Yu sat down beside the backpack and stroked the cat’s head, over and over.
He asked quietly, “You’re not going to see her properly?”
Maybe it was lover’s intuition, maybe he was just too sharp. Either way, he’d basically reconstructed the entire truth.
And once he’d guessed it, his heart ached badly for the cat.
He thought about it and his hand balled into a fist on the cat’s ear.
How old was the cat, really? Even if you rolled his years as a pet cat into his age now, he was still only a young man in his early twenties.
Human kids that age were still in college. How much joy and sorrow, how many partings and reunions, were they really equipped to handle?
Why did a cat have to bear so much? Tang Yu’s heart hurt.
Inside the pack, the cat lowered his head and looked at his own paws.
Fluffy paws, bright orange paws, paws that could only scoop things up.
Paws that had once run straight toward his mom.
He licked Tang Yu’s fingertips, then crawled out of the backpack and curled himself into Tang Yu’s arms, kneading his chest and secretly thinking about his mother.
Not going to see her? No. He wouldn’t.
He had his own cat logic.
He thought, love was love. If love really ended up like Director Li had said, with only a pile of feathers left behind and nothing else, even all those sweet promises turning into harsh words in the end…
If the day came when Corn Bean wasn’t Corn Bean anymore, just a pot of mushy corn, if he started resenting that his lover wasn’t human and regretting that he’d once loved a cat…
If that day came, and Corn Bean chose to have his memories of yaoguai and that world erased, chose to forget all the time they’d spent in love…
Then, as tragic as that would be, it would also be fair.
If his lover’s memories were gone, the cat would still remember the sweetness. He’d pat himself on the head and keep living.
But what if his mom forgot him?
Then the roots that tied him to this world would be gone.
Would she be terrified by his appearance, shattered by a broken worldview? Was he really going to go and tear open her life again?
Was he going to drag He Sangchi back to that eighteen-year-old farewell from ten years ago? Or drag Yang Shengzhao, who’d struggled through ten hard years of life, back into helplessness and chaos?
He didn’t dare appear in front of his mom. He followed the Bureau’s rules, and he couldn’t bear the thought that ten years of memories might end up kept only by one little cat.
Was this what made humans so complicated? Curled in Tang Yu’s arms, the cat cried a little.
The complicated part was that love and family were both important, but completely different.
One was bold enough to accept mutual hurt. The other came with a trembling kind of care.
One could be faced together. The other was something he’d rather shoulder alone.
So there was no need.
Regret was the default state of life. That was how he was learning, little by little, what it meant to be human.
Seeing his cat so miserable, Tang Yu scooped him up and went to buy a sausage.
He knew that no amount of talking would magically cheer such a pitiful cat up. So he just held up the sausage to his lips and let him eat.
The cat scrubbed away his tears with his paws. He was heartbroken, but he was also hungry and greedy.
So he started eating the sausage.
Tang Yu let out a soft sigh, full of helpless affection.
Little cat, little cat. Your tears are pearls, and you’re eating yourself into a little pig.
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