Chapter 5
Seeing this scene, the girl who had bought the grilled sausage instantly teared up. Forgetting about dirt, she reached out and picked up Jiang Heng.
She glared at the man. “Li Ping, are you even human? You could kick such a small cat?”
The man scoffed. “It’s just an animal. If you like it so much, take it home and raise it yourself.”
He stared at the girl. “You let this cat in, didn’t you? It’s so filthy, who knows how many germs it carries. If I get infected, are you going to pay my medical bills?”
“You!”
“What about me? The company cafeteria isn’t your home. You can’t do whatever you want.”
He glanced at the cat in her arms with disgust. “Don’t let me see this animal again, or it won’t be something a single kick can resolve.”
Jiang Heng watched the man walk away swaggeringly and thought to himself:
He wasn’t dirty. He bathed every day.
He just…
Just couldn’t get clean.
…
Most people were still kind. After the man left, several people gathered around the girl.
“Is the cat alright?”
“Such a small cat, kicked so far, I’m afraid it won’t survive.”
“It looks so pitiful…”
Suddenly, the cat in the girl’s arms stiffened and vomited.
The crowd was startled. The girl holding the cat looked helpless. “What’s wrong with it?”
A woman in her thirties squeezed through the crowd. She took the cat, not minding the dirt, and felt it all over, muttering in a dialect Jiang Heng couldn’t understand.
Jiang Heng drowsily heard the girl speak.
“What? FIP!”
[Translator’s Note: FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis) is a severe and often fatal disease in cats caused by a mutated feline virus.]
Sighs rippled through the crowd. “Such a small cat, how tragic.”
Someone suggested, “Leave it. You can barely support yourself with your three-thousand-yuan salary, how can you take care of a cat?”
Jiang Heng and Little White were eventually placed in the flower bed beside the cafeteria. In an empty bowl next to them were cat food someone had bought, along with canned food and a few sausages.
This was his most bountiful meal since becoming a cat.
But Jiang Heng had lost his appetite.
He lay on the ground, watching Little White gobbling down the food, its previously skinny belly visibly filling up.
Like a balloon being inflated.
Little White stopped eating and rubbed against him. “Are you alright?”
Jiang Heng felt a burning pain in his chest and suspected that his ribs had been broken by the man’s kick.
But compared to other things, the pain in his chest was nothing.
FIP…
Even though he didn’t own a cat, he had seen enough videos online to know about this highly fatal disease.
If there was anything worse than waking up a week later to find it was four years in the future, it was probably suddenly discovering that he wasn’t going to live much longer.
The past week or so had seemed to be telling him:
Compared to dying young at eighteen, becoming a cat wasn’t so bad.
So these past few days, he had been encouraging himself, telling himself it was no big deal.
His lack of appetite, his low energy… it was just him getting used to being a cat.
He hadn’t expected that he was actually sick…
Seeing that he remained silent, Little White anxiously dragged a can of cat food in front of him. “Eat this. This is delicious. You’ll be fine after you eat it.”
He wouldn’t be fine…
Jiang Heng lowered his eyes. The emotions he had been suppressing crept up within him amidst the unbearable pain.
The garbage heap was smelly, the rotten food was disgusting, he couldn’t fight other cats, he was like a rat on the street, having to tuck his tail wherever he went, even humans bullied him…
The past eighteen years felt like a short, illusory dream.
…
Plop!
Crystal-clear teardrops bloomed into bitter flowers on the blades of grass.
“I’m going to die again…”
Jiang Heng said.
“Boss…” Little White looked at a loss.
Jiang Heng grinned, as if smiling.
“Little White, do you know Lu Yichuan?”
His tail curled up slightly.
“He’s my best, best, best friend.”
He seemed to be showing off to Little White, but also comforting himself.
“If he were still with me, those who bullied me wouldn’t get away with it. He would beat them to the ground, knock their teeth out, make them cry, and they could only apologize to me while sobbing.”
“They would cry and say: ‘Noble Cat Lord, it was this lowly one’s fault, I accidentally offended you. Please be magnanimous and forgive me.’”
“I wouldn’t forgive them! They went too far!”
But…
His raised tail seemed to lose its last bit of strength and slowly drooped.
But Lu Yichuan wasn’t with him anymore.
Lu Yichuan jolted awake.
His hands twitched uncontrollably at his sides, his chest heaving, his eyes a dark, deep black.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The university was silent. The streetlight outside the balcony cast a dim shadow of the plane tree branches on the beige floor.
He stared at the swaying shadows, for a moment unable to distinguish between reality and illusion. Only the dense pain radiating from his heart reminded him that he was still alive.
Lu Yichuan got out of bed without turning on the light and walked to the balcony in the dim light from outside.
The tree shadows swayed slightly in the wind. He lifted his damp hair from his forehead, revealing a face devoid of warmth.
Without the bangs covering it, his face appeared darkly somber in the night, pale, with dark eyes.
At this moment, he looked more like a walking corpse than a human.
Lu Yichuan released his hand and turned on the faucet to wash his hands.
He washed meticulously, making sure his hands were clean before carefully wiping off the water. Only when his fingers were completely dry did he slowly place his hand on his chest.
His chest was burning hot, but his fingertips were cool. Through a thin layer of fabric, he pressed against his heart, using his fingertips to trace the hard outline hidden beneath his clothes. Slender, somewhat uncomfortable to hold, attached to a black string around his neck, it rested snugly against his heart, warmed day after day by his body temperature, taking on the same warmth as him.
The leaves rustled softly, the shadows on the floor stretched long, and the night was silent. In front of the mirror, the tall figure resembled a frozen statue.
After an unknown amount of time on the balcony, Lu Yichuan finally turned and went back inside. He opened the drawer beside his bed. Inside lay a box, the word “Vitamins” barely discernible on it in the dim light.
He opened the bottle and found it empty.
He closed his eyes, pressed his unconsciously twitching fingers, threw the bottle down, grabbed his jacket, and left the dormitory.
Jiang Heng couldn’t sleep. In the middle of the night, he opened his eyes, looking at the few stars scattered in the sky, his eyes listless.
Little White, cuddling a small ball it had found somewhere, was sound asleep in the corner. The old orange cat, dragging its injured hind leg, slowly came to his side.
It nudged Jiang Heng onto the ground and licked his belly.
As a human, Jiang Heng disliked this feline expression of affection. He pushed the orange cat away and climbed up, wincing slightly as the movement tugged at his injured chest.
Big Yellow looked at him with concern. “Are you alright?”
“Of course I’m fine,” Jiang Heng replied. “It was just a kick. With my physique, I’ll recover in two days.”
The orange cat didn’t speak, just looked at him quietly.
Under its gaze, Jiang Heng’s eyes slowly drooped, and a very soft, almost inaudible sob escaped his lips, easily mistaken for an illusion if one wasn’t listening carefully.
He was always more honest with Big Yellow than with Little White.
“Actually, I’m not fine.”
“I’m dying, Big Yellow.”
“I’m dying after only living for a week. I…”
The distant lights crossed the mottled alley walls and fell on Jiang Heng, elongating his small figure, casting a distorted shadow on the ground.
All alone.
“I wasn’t this sad when I first woke up as a cat. Even though life was hard, I felt like I deserved it. After all, I stole someone else’s life. I turned him into… that. Maybe this is my punishment…”
“I thought, once I’m mentally prepared, I’ll go find them, even if I don’t tell them I’ve become a cat, I’ll go see if they’re doing okay. But…”
“I didn’t expect it to be four years later.”
Four years, seemingly short, yet also long. But these mere four years were enough to change many things.
Enough for someone to finish university, enough for a family to move on from grief… Time hadn’t changed him, but it had changed everything around him. In the end, only he remained stuck in the past.
“I thought back then, even if my parents didn’t recognize me, it wouldn’t matter. I could go find Lu Yichuan, act cute and beg him to take me in…”
His voice trembled slightly. “But how did four years suddenly pass by…”
Time was like flowing water. The further it flowed, the more diluted feelings became. Those things he had been certain of, when faced with this chasm of time, suddenly lost their supporting rationale.
Where did he get the confidence to assume that someone who had been dead for four years would still hold an important place in another person’s heart?
Pain stabbed his abdomen again, and Jiang Heng dry heaved. But he hadn’t eaten anything in the afternoon, so nothing came up.
The orange cat had lived a long time and had naturally seen a lot.
It crouched beside Jiang Heng. “You’re sick.”
There were no white lies in the animal world. It told him the cruel truth in the calmest tone. “If you don’t get treatment, you’ll only live for a month at most.”
Jiang Heng was silent for a moment, then asked the orange cat, “What are you living for?”
It was the first time the orange cat had been asked such a philosophical question by another cat. It thought for a while before answering.
“Sunlight, air, and water.”
In the natural world, everything had to be fought for, except for these three things, which were gifts from heaven.
Little White in the corner rolled over and continued to sleep. The orange cat moved closer and licked Jiang Heng’s fur. The thin kitten huddled in its embrace, its shadow covered by the orange cat, as the stars twinkled silently above.
After a long time, he announced to the orange cat, “I want to leave here.”
The orange cat stopped licking, its eyes showing no sign of reluctance. “Where are you going?”
A few dog barks echoed in the silent night. Jiang Heng stood up. Like every day when he went out to forage, he raised his head, tail held high, and announced loudly:
“I’m going to visit the university I didn’t get to attend in my last life.”
