“Blackie~ When you’re a little older, how about I get you spayed?”

Early in the morning, Ning Chu crouched in the corner of the dorm room, hands on his knees, whispering like a little devil.

“That way, even if you really turn into a catgirl, you’ll be a spayed catgirl who doesn’t go into heat, right?”

The kitten yawned and lifted her head, then rolled over without a trace of ladylike grace and flopped down beside his feet.

“Is it feeling any better?”

“Yeah. It seems a lot livelier.”

Wen Yang sat at the head of the bed, gazing from afar at the petite, charming figure crouched in the corner. “Good. Have you thought of a name for it yet?”

“Hmm... Anything’s fine, I guess. How about Blackie?”

“What about Chocolate?”

Ning Chu whipped around and looked up at Wen Yang, who was at the head of the upper bunk.

“What’s wrong?” Wen Yang scratched his head. “I think it’s a pretty good name. Chocolate’s black, and so is she.”

Now it was certain: this kitten was the very catgirl from the story who would repay Wen Yang’s kindness.

That catgirl was also called Chocolate...

He really had let the wolf in through the front door!

If he hadn’t interfered, Wen Yang might’ve brought the kitten back to the dorm yesterday afternoon.

“That doesn’t sound good. How about...” Ning Chu got an idea and started thinking of food-related names. “Let’s call her Black Bean!”

“It’s a little weird.” Wen Yang didn’t insist. He got out of bed. “It’s your cat, so you decide.”

“Mm.”

Fortunately, she was still just a kitten, so she posed absolutely no threat to Wen Yang’s virginity. If Ning Chu had guessed right, she was only about a month old, with nearly a year to go before reaching sexual maturity.

The catgirl-repays-a-kindness plot couldn’t possibly happen within the next year. And why not? Because minors aren’t allowed to get frisky!

No need to panic!

Ning Chu stroked Black Bean’s little head with a finger, stretched, and stood up straight to look out the window.

The downpour had ended last night, and outside it was sunny again—the kind of sunny day that made you want to curse.

Time for military training again...

With no cat food, Ning Chu could only leave Black Bean a bowl of goat’s milk and a crumbled-up sausage. After breakfast in the dorm, he left with a few of his roommates.

The sunny day after the rain felt like a giant steamer. By the time Ning Chu reached the damp, dewy sports field, a thin sheen of sweat had already appeared on his forehead.

The high humidity and heat made it feel as if even the air going into his lungs was warm.

“Left~ face! About~ face! At~ ease!”

Military training went on as usual, but today the instructor was feeling a little mischievous. Every so often, someone failed to react in time and got the move wrong, setting off waves of laughter from the students and adding a little fun to the dull training.

Unusually, Han Jingye had shown up at military training today, too.

He found a place to sit not far away and watched the students training from a distance.

He must be looking for prey again!

Ning Chu grumbled inwardly about Han Jingye, though his opinion of the counselor had already begun to waver.

No matter how he looked at it, Han Jingye didn’t seem like a bad guy... If anything, he seemed like a pretty dedicated counselor.

Maybe the instructor had felt how hot and humid it was today, too. Before long, he called for a break. Ning Chu hurried beneath the trees and plopped down without caring that the ground was still a little damp.

He crossed his legs and pulled out his phone, ready to buy some cat food for Black Bean online.

“What brand of cat food should I get?”

Prices here weren’t much different from his previous life. Cat food ranged from a few dozen yuan to several hundred. He wasn’t planning to buy anything too fancy—as long as Black Bean got enough nutrition and didn’t get sick, that was fine.

But even so, every brand recommended online seemed to have some dirt on it.

Worms in the food, mold, cats dropping dead on the spot after eating it...

After a difficult search, he picked a ten-jin bag of cat food for two hundred yuan. But when he tapped to pay and saw the insufficient balance notice, he suddenly realized he was completely broke.

He’d spent quite a bit going to the amusement park with Wen Yang last weekend. And lately, Zhang Shaoqing kept talking him into ordering milk tea with discount deals and late-night snacks. There was still almost a week until the end of the month, and he had only a little over a hundred yuan left.

“Crap...”

He could make a little over a hundred yuan last if he was careful, but what was the cat supposed to eat? She couldn’t live on goat’s milk and sausage every day.

Then he remembered that the day his parents sent his living expenses was coming up soon.

What were his parents in this world like...?

His family had left him early in his previous life, so the strange feeling of suddenly having parents here still made Ning Chu a little uncomfortable.

Wen Yang was sitting right beside him. He heard Ning Chu muttering under his breath and turned to look at him curiously.

Ning Chu’s bangs were already soaked with sweat, clinging damply to his forehead and temples. It didn’t make him look messy or unattractive. If anything, it gave Wen Yang a delicate, vulnerable beauty.

At the same time, Wen Yang caught that fragrance again—the one he could never quite describe.

Whenever Ning Chu sweated, the scent became especially clear.

Noticing the gaze beside him, Ning Chu looked up in confusion. Wen Yang quickly shifted his eyes to the phone screen. “Buying cat food for Black Bean?”

“Yeah. I don’t have enough money...”

“Just get some sample packs for now. The kitten can’t eat that much anyway.”

“That makes sense!”

Ning Chu’s eyes lit up, and he immediately started searching for cat food samples on the shopping app. But the corner of his eye kept drifting to the pink thermos in Wen Yang’s hand.

As if it had just occurred to him, he asked casually, “Which girl gave that to you? Must be nice~”

“I don’t even like sour plum drink. It was that girl from yesterday morning.” Wen Yang sighed helplessly. “She looked so wronged, like she’d cry if I didn’t drink it.”

“That girl...” Ning Chu pressed his lips together.

It seemed like only characters who mattered to the plot chased after Wen Yang relentlessly. The others acted pretty normally. Sure, they showed that they liked him, but at least they didn’t come right out and demand his DNA.

Finally, a normal person!

She liked him but was too shy to say so, and could only quietly bring him a bottle of sour plum drink and watch the boy she liked from afar. That kind of bashful, innocent romance~ In this trope-packed smutty webnovel, it was downright moving.

“What’s with you? Jealous?” Wen Yang teased with a smile. “You’ve got someone who likes you, too, don’t you? The café owner’s a rich woman. I’m jealous of you.”

“I don’t think my little body could handle what a rich woman would put me through.”

“You’re overthinking it.” Wen Yang glanced at Ning Chu’s phone screen again and pointed out, “Why not buy one of those cans of cat food you just scrolled past?”

Ning Chu shook his head. “Too expensive. It’s twenty yuan!”

“I’ll pay for this one. Think of it as a housewarming gift for Black Bean.”

Ning Chu looked at Wen Yang suspiciously. “You don’t even have enough money for your own meals. Where are you getting the money to buy Black Bean a can of food?”

“Did you get a part-time job?”

“Or is some girl giving you spending money?”

A sudden, intense pressure seemed to burst from Ning Chu. Wen Yang instinctively felt a little guilty and leaned back without meaning to. “No.”

“No?”

“I just do paid game boosting for people at night. I finished an order last night and made a little over twenty yuan.”

Ning Chu suddenly smiled, bright and cheerful. “I was just curious.”