After getting off the subway, Gu Chuan looked up at the moon hidden in the clouds.

The shadows of the trees let the light spill through in patches, casting the road home in a lonely, distant glow.

The small building in the distance looked eerie from its decay. Beside it was a love hotel with lurid lights. Together, the whole scene felt like postmodern ruin and desolation fused into one.

Gu Chuan couldn't afford cyberpunk, really. But the place he lived in felt pretty cyberpunk anyway.

He quickened his pace through a stretch without streetlights, then arrived downstairs at the room he rented.

Turning past the stairwell lit by a white lampshade filled with the corpses of mosquitoes and moths, he stepped into the corridor where people waited for the elevator.

The elevator was stopped on the fifth floor, the floor where he and Qiu Muzhe were neighbors.

So it seemed... after Qiu Muzhe came back, no one had returned to this dead-silent broken-down building in the suburbs to press the button and send the elevator up again.

That was why it had stayed on the fifth floor the whole time.

To be honest, Gu Chuan had never noticed when Qiu Muzhe moved in.

Or maybe she hadn't moved anything at all. Maybe she had simply moved into an unfurnished vacant room without hesitation, just to get closer to him.

If that was really the case, even Gu Chuan couldn't help but sigh.

If he got the chance, he'd ask her whether she needed help moving.

She was still his junior from years ago, after all, he thought.

At the same time, the elevator arrived in front of him. The doors opened, revealing a grimy, mottled interior wall plastered with ads of all sizes. There were also phone numbers and contact info scrawled in marker.

One line had left a deep impression on Gu Chuan:

Schoolgirl escort available, phone number 135XXXXXXXX, QQ: 263XXXXXXX

Doing business all the way out in a place this remote... did they really think there'd be any energetic young guys here?

Wait...

Gu Chuan suddenly realized that the young guy was actually himself.

Still, he paid no attention to weird ads like that.

Just like he had never once thought of calling the numbers on those little cards with sexy women on them, the kind scattered on the street or outside hotels.

Right now, nothing could stop him from getting back to his floor and feeding the cute little catgirl Xuechun, who had been waiting for him so bitterly long.

Inside the plastic bag, the little fish swam freely in their tiny patch of world.

If they were smug enough, they might think the bag was a little sea, and that they were the masters of it.

But they would never know.

On the other side of the sea, there was a catgirl.

The elevator doors opened. Gu Chuan left the corridor and reached the corner where his rented room and Qiu Muzhe's faced each other.

He glanced at the quiet door on the right, then took out his key and opened the door on the left.

The lights at home were off. He felt along the wall from memory until he found the plastic switch jutting out, then pressed the entryway light on.

What lit up along with the lamp was a pair of watery, pitiful eyes.

Xuechun was crouching not far from the door in a posture cats often used. But she had already transformed into a catgirl, so the pose became both obedient and faintly sexy, something like a girl's duck-sit.

Gu Chuan let out a long breath and murmured softly,

"Xuechun, I'm back."

He set down his shoulder bag, full of anticipation, ready to welcome the cute hug of an affectionate Xuechun.

But what met him was a hesitant look.

Xuechun slowly crawled toward Gu Chuan, her little hands touching the floor, her pale skin flushed red.

Without fur and paw pads, it had to be cold...

And yet even so, Xuechun had stubbornly stayed by the door, like the wife-waiting stone from old legends, obstinately waiting for her master's return.

But the master she waited for had come back carrying the scent of another cat.

Xuechun came to her master's side. First she sniffed his leg, then the hand reaching over to pat her head. Because of that other cat's scent, Xuechun avoided the touch.

The sadness that brought her was no less than a miser willingly throwing away their fortune.

Gu Chuan froze in surprise. He hadn't expected this kind of treatment when he came back.

Xuechun... was actually rejecting him.

"Meow..."

And yet her cry was so fragile. The light had faded from her watery eyes, like the moon shattered after falling into a lake.

Xuechun meowed twice more. There was none of her usual warmth in it. Instead, it sounded like an unbearably pitiful, heartbroken complaint.

Then she lashed her tail hard, and her tiny figure slipped into the unlit darkness of the living room, vanishing from sight.

This time, the meaning of Xuechun's tail swishing

was no different from any other kitten's.

It meant sadness and anger.

That left Gu Chuan standing dumbly in the doorway, his expression stiff and lost.

At a time like this, the words "Xuechun, I bought little fish for you" got stuck in his throat. He couldn't say them anymore.

Gu Chuan turned on the lights in the living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom one by one, flooding the whole apartment with brightness.

He wanted to find Xuechun.

His Xuechun...

But he found nothing. He searched every obvious place.

Now that Xuechun could turn into a girl, there was no way she should've been able to hide in an apartment this size.

So the only possibility...

had already surfaced in Gu Chuan's mind.

Next, he began searching the narrow gaps.

Searching for a tiny white kitten.

Not under the sofa.

Not in the cabinet.

Not in the little drawer.

...

He searched for a long time. No matter how he called Xuechun's name, she refused to come out.

Gu Chuan had never been this shaken before.

Xuechun was that important to him. But usually, she was always within his reach, and he had never realized it.

Exhausted, Gu Chuan collapsed among the scattered clothes. He stared at the ceiling, his gaze empty.

Maybe it was a hallucination, but he thought he heard a faint meow from his right.

But what was there... only one of his coats.

"Meow..."

But the sound came again. Even a worn-out, heartsore Gu Chuan felt hope flare back to life.

He jerked his head to the side, just in time to see a scene that tugged at the heart.

A tiny kitten slowly crawled out of the coat pocket. Her pink little paws hesitated. Her tearful eyes were still full of grievance.

And yet she couldn't bear seeing her master look miserable because of her.

But then... was it fine as long as she was the only one hurting?

Xuechun couldn't answer that, because she was only a little kitten...

The crying little cat softly meowed and rubbed the softest tuft of fluff on top of her head against her master's palm.

No matter when, she would always love the feeling of being petted by her master.

She loved it most of all.

And that was exactly why it hurt so much

that her master's touch no longer belonged to her alone.