Whenever I look up at towering buildings, I can’t help but feel the illusion that I’m nothing more than a tiny ant struggling to crawl across this vast earth.
Curling up my body, the cat ears atop my head had long since been stiffened by the bone-chilling winter wind, no longer soft and flexible as they usually were.
Even though it was late at night, the hotel was still lit up with splendid golden lights.
Having grown accustomed to the dim, murky gloom of alleys, when I suddenly lifted my head to face this building, my eyes stung, and hot tears immediately streamed down.
Of course… for a catgirl, light alone wouldn’t hinder her ability to act normally at night.
What made me unable to stop crying was the deep fear I held toward the outside world.
That fear had been accumulating for so long. Even when I hid under the blankets in my room, my empty body would gather it up during moments of “love” with Gu Fan.
Each time I realized that Gu Fan spent every day working and socializing inside such towering buildings… and even flirting with his female subordinates… my heart would clog up as if stuffed with sticky chewing gum.
“What should I do… Should I go inside and look for Gu Fan?”
Right now, I curled my soft body even tighter, my tail wrapping around my calf and drooping behind my little boots.
The hotel’s lights shone brightly, but they only stretched a few meters onto the street before fading away quickly.
Taking advantage of the shadows born from the overlap of light and darkness, I hid behind the roadside flowerbed, my eyes locked firmly on the hotel’s exit.
I wanted to lie in wait, like a hunter guarding a rabbit’s burrow, waiting for Gu Fan to come out of there.
The moment this thought appeared in my mind, it was immediately chosen and established as my first plan.
But once I actually carried it out—successfully hiding in a spot where Gu Fan could never discover me—I was instead overcome by an unshakable anxiety and unwillingness.
Clearly, I am Gu Fan’s lawful wife. So why should I have to be this humble?
For the moment, I brushed it off with excuses like “think of the bigger picture” or “be sensible,” yet as my attention drifted, all sorts of stray thoughts slipped in and occupied the forefront of my mind.
Why not just storm into the hotel room? Catching him in the act would be more solid evidence, and I could nail him down, forcing this scumbag Gu Fan to pay me more.
That’s what a normal person would think, right?
Wrapping my arms around my knees, I hugged my small body, lowering my gaze as I felt faint stirrings from my belly.
Girls of the new era are supposed to be independent and self-respecting, aren’t they?
A useless woman like me, who only knows how to rely on Gu Fan, really isn’t qualified to keep calling herself one.
But if I truly see the scene of Gu Fan “cheating”… what will happen to the baby inside me… what will happen to me…?
The more I realized how dangerous it would be to actually witness his “infidelity,” the more intense my urge to run away became.
Deep down, I didn’t want to face the reality of Gu Fan’s divided affections. I still wanted to deceive myself, to cling to the dreamlike beauty of the present.
If it were really possible to stay dreaming forever, I would gladly choose to drown in that dream.
But… can I really do it?
Stepping out from the spacious apartment, I was thrust into a world at least a hundred million times larger than the home Gu Fan had bought.
The tiny me was like a grain of sand tossed into the sea—once I sank, I would never be seen again.
If that apartment were the whole world for Gu Fan and me, I would still have the confidence to demand his absolute devotion.
If he tried to run, there would be nowhere to go. I could trap him in some corner, play out my little tricks of pleasing him until he gave in, and drag him down with me into the bottomless abyss where no light reached.
But obviously, reality could never be as extreme as I imagined.
The moment Gu Fan stepped out of the house, someone like me—who fears crowds—might never be able to find him again…
So-called self-deception, in the end, was nothing but lying to myself.
One day, Gu Fan would inevitably exhaust the love he had for me and leave me with a “respectable” ending.
I could already guess: maybe it would be a house, maybe a lifetime’s worth of money for me and the baby, maybe all sorts of valuable things in this society that I had never seen before.
For ordinary people, just possessing those would already make their happiness overflow, enough to let them carry on life with a smile.
But if I were to receive them… what kind of life would I live?
The bitterly cold wind swept past my ears, my ink-black hair swaying lightly in the gusts.
I buried my face into my knees, doing everything I could to escape the light shining down on me from all sides, imagining that I had already returned to the warmth of my bed.
I held my breath, refusing to let my slightly flushed little nose take in the icy air of the outside world.
As the suffocating sensation gradually spread, it felt as if my skin was being peeled away into a strange, separate existence…
In that space, I felt as though I was wrapped in a mysterious warmth—just like when I was a child, carefree and nestled in my mother’s embrace.
Back then, we were all still happy, unaware of the sordid things my father was doing outside.
So I hid, concealed myself, throwing my body into delusions to comfort myself.
“Ring ring—”
Suddenly, the ringtone in my pocket shattered the illusion I had forged, dragging me back into this freezing winter.
The tears clinging to the corners of my eyes had already dried, leaving behind faint streaks.
As the icy, sand-laden wind brushed over those streaks, it seeped into my skin, pricking at my heart.
I stared blankly for a moment. Then, as the phone rang again, my stiff fingers pressed the volume key, switching it to silent.
Shifting my gaze, I looked at the screen that had lit up automatically.
The location had changed. And as if by some cruel coincidence, Gu Fan really had chosen this inconspicuous side door to leave the hotel.
I clenched my phone tightly. My heart pounded wildly, so loud it felt like it was thudding right against my ears. I knew it was just my blood vessels swelling with pressure.
Only at that moment did I realize—when problems appear, there are only two choices you can make.
One is to face them directly, using every ounce of strength to overcome them. Even if you fail, you’ll at least gain something, though the mental pressure you must endure in the process will be enormous.
The other is to run away, circling around the problem endlessly. But the problem won’t die, won’t even be hurt. Instead, with time, it will only grow larger, distort, and develop strange powers to block your path.
Until… it had already become unavoidable. No matter which way I turned, there were traces of it everywhere.
When a problem grows to that stage, perhaps all that’s left for me to do is accept being destroyed by it…
For someone like me, who wanted to build a healthy relationship with Gu Fan, if only I had realized the true nature of the problem earlier, maybe I would have chosen without hesitation to face the enemy standing before me and fight.
Instead of ending up like this—retreating step by step—until Gu Fan lost interest in me, drawn instead to another woman, while I had no way to fight back and win his heart again.
My eyes, fixed on the side door exit, were dried out from the wind.
After blinking a few times, my blurred vision cleared—and a familiar figure appeared.
Gu Fan, walking out of the hotel with a voluptuous woman by his side, chatting and laughing together.
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