The path home sloped downward, bathed in honey-colored sunlight, but the one waddling along this sweet trail was a plump black-and-white kitty-penguin.
Her cat ears bobbed with each step. The trees on both sides of the slope hadn’t been trimmed by gardeners in ages, their overgrown branches hanging low, blocking part of the way.
The little kitty-penguin relied on her cat ears’ unique sensitivity to brush away the leaves and twigs falling on her head.
I deliberately slowed my pace, admiring my childhood friend wrapped tightly in the thick white jacket.
Ever since I zipped it up to the top, she’d been pouting with her little mouth, refusing to look at me directly.
What was amusing was the stark height and build difference between Zhinian and me. The jacket’s hem reached her knees, and with the slope leading back to the park entrance, her steps looked wobbly, like a little penguin struggling across polar ice.
“…”
Mumbled syllables sounded ahead of me. Zhinian, hugging the slope’s edge as she walked, muttered words too soft for me to catch, occasionally shooting me resentful glares.
Her small hands slapped at the roadside bushes, venting her inner frustration.
Helplessly rubbing my forehead with a wry smile, I could guess some of Zhinian’s little thoughts, but at this stage, I had no intention of responding.
It’s still too early… Half a year ago, I was still battling a terminal illness. Though the doctors called it a miracle, declaring the nearly incurable condition completely gone, I was still worried.
What if the illness returned without warning? If our relationship with Zhinian became too close by then…
Now that we’re so close it’s hard to part, how should I give Zhinian a proper explanation?
Once a bond forms, it comes with the heavy responsibility it entails. That’s why I’ve always avoided getting too close to people—the misfortune clinging to me makes me unworthy of such deep, serious love.
As my thoughts wandered, I suddenly heard a sharp intake of breath—a pained gasp. My gaze focused on the source, landing on a little kitty-penguin with red blood staining her hand.
Tears hung at the corners of her eyes. She furrowed her brows, glaring angrily at the wild rose bush by the road. The thorny roses had scratched Zhinian’s fingertip.
“Ugh… Gu Fan…”
Seeming to sense my gaze, Zhinian turned her head weakly, biting her lower lip as she called my name.
The little kitty-penguin held up her bleeding finger, her tail listlessly sweeping the leaf-strewn ground.
Her teary eyes, on the verge of spilling over, made her look like a rain-soaked fledgling, begging for my care and comfort.
“Calling me Gu Fan now? Weren’t you just calling me a big idiot a moment ago?”
As always, I used teasing to ease the inexplicable restlessness stirring inside me. I deliberately averted my eyes, staring at the bushes or the air on either side, blurring Zhinian’s alluring expression and figure.
I’m no monk who’s cultivated from childhood. The impact of beauty can still make my heart race, and with puberty’s hormones and my habit of exercising, my reactions as a man are even stronger than average.
That’s why I need to restrain myself more, not easily showing my darker thoughts. Cat-girls are fragile creatures that need careful tending.
If I accidentally scare her, it’ll take a lot of time and energy to soothe her.
As I approached the little kitty-penguin, her restless tail slapping the ground suddenly froze, then tentatively reached toward me.
By the time Zhinian realized her tail’s overstep, the mischievous black cat tail had already wrapped around my wrist, pulling me closer to its owner.
For the first time, I felt how strong a cat-girl’s tail could be—its grip as firm as a coarse rope. I let it tug me, naturally taking Zhinian’s injured hand in mine.
“Eek?!”
Whenever we got to an ambiguous distance, Zhinian would let out strange meows. Her ruby-like eyes would glaze over with a misty fog, swirling dizzily, her mouth mumbling syllables I could barely make out.
Sometimes, I couldn’t resist the urge to lunge forward and bite her cat ears, to see if the overly sensitive cat-girl childhood friend would short-circuit, losing control of herself in an instant, standing frozen like a delicate doll for me to tease as I pleased.
Reining in my chaotic thoughts, I caught Zhinian snapping back to reality from the corner of my eye. She muttered under her breath, grabbing her tail and yanking it off my wrist.
Under its owner’s firm control, the previously lively black cat tail instantly wilted, like a fake toy.
Zhinian coiled it up like a data cable into small loops, then lifted the hem of the oversized down jacket, stuffing it into her pleated skirt, officially sealing her tail away.
I saw Zhinian mouth “mission accomplished” to herself, but she forgot to rein in the more mischievous cat ears on her head.
The branches were flicked away by her ears in reflex, swinging like pendulums before touching the cat ears again, only to be mercilessly batted away once more.
The pale green leaves clinging to the branch finally gave way after repeated “meow” shakes, fluttering down and brushing my brow, partially obscuring my vision.
In that moment, I caught a scent sweeter and more metallic than rust—whether it was the leaf’s aroma or the slender fingers of my cat-girl childhood friend, gripped in my hand.
As my consciousness was drawn to these ethereal illusions, my hormone- and instinct-driven body seized the chance to break free from control, doing what it most desired right then.
“Wahhh!! Gu Fan! Y-You…!”
I’d just been mocking Zhinian for being thick-headed and spacing out, but I never expected to lose myself like this.
By the time I realized what I was doing, my lips had already closed around the wound. The bitter fragrance of the rose bloomed, and Zhinian’s pulse thrummed against my tongue like a derailed train.
“This is punishment.”
Taking a deep breath, I feigned composure and released it.
“For the bad kitty who touches thorny things.”
Zhinian froze like a rusted railway sign, her hair strands solidified in the sunlight.
The veins rising on the inner side of her slender wrist suddenly reminded me of the swollen metal joints at track seams.
A dangerous tension was building between us.