“Dummy kitty…”
Seeing Gu Fan shake his head with an amused smile, my whole body tensed up, a complex mix of indescribable feelings coursing through me like an electric current.
“I’m not pretty… Gu Fan praising me like this makes my brain all mushy and jumbled.”
I lowered my head, trying hard to avoid his gaze, but kept my movements small, afraid he’d think I disliked this close contact.
My cat ears kept trembling, and I wondered if they brushed against Gu Fan in front of me.
At that thought, I looked up and immediately plunged into a vibrant spring garden opened just for me.
The boy’s gentle smile and his outstretched hand reached toward me.
“Eek?!”
My tail shot up in delight, nearly lifting the hem of my skirt.
I held my breath tightly, wanting to close my eyes to savor every detail of Gu Fan’s palm, yet reluctant to miss this rare chance for his touch.
“There, there, Zhinian. You need to know, as a cat-girl, you’re charming in every way. Be more confident. The one who hesitates and overthinks isn’t you.”
His broad palm covered the sensitive, nerve-filled cat ears on my head. I could clearly “see” with them where his palm had thin calluses and how the fine lines were distributed.
As his hand brushed over, my cat ears instinctively twitched, then eagerly pressed themselves back into his palm.
“Wah~”
Unable to hold back the excitement bubbling deep inside, my half-closed eyes seemed to reflect a shaky red heart.
Was it because my emotions were always so unstable that my heart decided to abandon me?
Quietly savoring the comfort from my childhood friend for a moment, I finally adjusted to the overwhelming happiness and temporarily pushed myself out of my comfort zone.
“Gu Fan thinks I’m pretty? In what way? If I weren’t a cat-girl… would Gu Fan stop liking me?”
My words came out stuttering, sticky and tangled like peanut candy. My vocal cords vibrated faintly, and my voice felt warped, as if sucked into a black hole.
I had only meant to ask for Gu Fan’s opinion, but unconsciously, my greedy feminine nature dragged out the worries buried deep in my heart.
Too nervous to look at him, I feared seeing impatience on his face.
But for the next seven seconds, I didn’t get a single response.
“Huh…?”
What’s going on? Why isn’t Gu Fan saying anything? Is he still in front of me?
The hand that had been resting on my head had pulled away the moment I asked, so I couldn’t tell where he was standing.
Despite my exceptional hearing, I felt like a deaf-mute in that moment, standing in the slightly cramped milk tea shop.
My field of vision was limited to my own cumbersome chest, the sky-blue skirt fluttering around me, and the patterned floor of the shop, stained with various hard-to-clean marks.
It was early morning, and the milk tea shop had just opened. Looking at the patterned floor, barely cleaned by the staff…
The streak left by a clean mop sent a wave of disgust through me. It was an inexplicable sense of loathing at finding myself in such a place.
Whenever I felt the urge to escape, my brain would conjure up all sorts of filthy things, as if trying to drive me back home—back into the prison of my bedroom bed—like taming a disobedient wild cat, softening me with the warmth of a quilt.
I must have been too reckless, asking Gu Fan a troublesome question that only made things difficult for him.
Yes, that’s it. I always fail at important moments. Instead of patiently letting our relationship progress step by step, I had to go and test it, even though it’s still far too fragile.
I felt so guilty I wanted to smash my fist against my own head—and in fact, I actually did.
Curling my right hand into a fist, I knocked it against the top of my head, right beside the base of my cat ears.
Even though my body’s instincts weakened the force of the blow, the overly sensitive nerves still did their job and delivered the sting of pain.
“Ugh, so annoying.”
If only I could turn this body into a motionless punching bag, while my soul stood off to the side—then I could bypass the instincts of a catgirl and give my stupid self the beating she deserves.
My wild thoughts spread across the barren wasteland of my heart like weeds. But the color wasn’t a tender green—it was a foreboding purple-black.
As the purple-black weeds spread through my mind, they turned the ground into a bubbling swamp.
From the tips of the weeds sprouted human mouths with teeth, like grotesque fruits, all staring at me in unison, muttering words I couldn’t understand but that made me feel deeply repulsed.
Just as I was about to be overwhelmed by the suffocating cacophony of demonic whispers, a sunflower suddenly bloomed on my left cheek.
“Zhinian, were you talking to me? Sorry, the staff were rushing us to grab our milk tea, and I didn’t hear clearly.”
I looked up in a daze, my consciousness clinging to Gu Fan’s voice like a lifeline, pulling me back to the real world where he existed.
Pressed against my left cheek was the plastic cup Gu Fan was holding—my red bean milk tea. Its lukewarm temperature was just right for calming my restless body and mind.
I reached out with both hands to hold it, unsure if I was trying to feel the warmth of Gu Fan’s hand or just take the milk tea—probably both.
Gu Fan didn’t stop me, letting me awkwardly clutch his right hand without letting go.
“Zhinian, you were asking me something just now, right?”
“Uh, no!”
Gu Fan’s calm question triggered a reflex in me. I quickly snatched the red bean milk tea and shook my head, denying his guess.
Because my denial was too loud, the busy staff around us shot curious glances our way.
Seizing the moment, I grabbed the corner of Gu Fan’s jacket and hurriedly pulled him out of the milk tea shop, back onto the sparsely populated commercial street.
I walked on Gu Fan’s right side. He didn’t protest my rushed behavior, just inserted a straw into his pearl milk tea and sipped it silently.
I secretly glanced at Gu Fan from the corner of my eye. The plastic cup in his left hand was beaded with condensation, forming a cool, damp circle at the edge of his palm.
In the morning light’s refraction, it caught my eye, hinting that Gu Fan had noticed my sneaky stares.
Shifting my gaze slightly upward, as expected, I met his eyes—those eyes that always carried an unreadable emotion.
Gu Fan always looked at me like this. Only when I did something taboo, crossing the boundaries of friendship, would he show the rare panic and unease that were hard to catch otherwise.
Compared to the proper, composed Gu Fan now, I preferred that flustered version of him.
Gu Fan bit the straw, letting out a satisfied hum. The vibration in his throat made my knuckles tingle faintly, torn between savoring my red bean milk tea or focusing on capturing every detail of him.
“Zhinian.”
The one to break the silence wasn’t me, who caused it, but the boy beside me.
“If someone thinks a Zhinian who’s dressed up so delicately and cutely isn’t beautiful, then that person’s taste is probably a bit off—no, definitely off.”
Gu Fan tapped his temple with a serious expression, finally giving the perfect answer to the question he hadn’t responded to earlier.
In the translucent milk tea cup in his hand, the brown sugar pearls sank slowly to the bottom, matching the rhythm of my heartbeat.
Keeping a 50-centimeter distance from Gu Fan, I suppressed the sweetness flooding my throat from the red bean milk tea, closely following the “sun” before me, bathed in light’s embrace.