Could a few brief seconds possibly allow me to say something meaningful?
With my mediocre language skills, could I come up with a grand declaration of love like a sea and mountain vow?
Just imagining the scene made me feel that such words would come off as forced, the carefully woven phrases sounding bland and uninspired.
At this very moment, I cursed myself for never having properly learned online how to craft witty confessions, or for not memorizing a few love-themed classical poems.
At least then, I could have pulled them out now, borrowing the beauty and power of words to shake Gu Fan’s heart just a little.
To put it bluntly, my clumsy nature was unsuited for this kind of refined and ladylike approach.
What I should do instead was simply rush forward, kiss Gu Fan, and just before disappearing, say the one most sincere thought from the bottom of my heart.
“I love you.”
After speaking that sentence aloud, I suddenly opened my eyes, hazily pulling my consciousness back into the real world.
I saw a black-robed catgirl smiling as she held my phone, her fingers clumsily swiping the screen as she wrote by hand.
“Hehe, such a pure and simple little catgirl. At the last moment, you said such a short sentence—it really made it easy for this old lady who doesn’t understand electronic devices,” she said with a mischievous grin.
Still not fully awake, I stared blankly at the fortune teller’s smirking face as she pressed a button to send a message, then lightly handed the phone back to me.
“Here, take a look. I’ve sent out your truest feelings from your heart. No need to thank me; I’m just a legend in the Jianghu, meow.”
With no time to pay attention to her strange hands-on-hips pose, I first looked at my phone screen.
It still displayed Gu Fan’s contact interface. Unlike before, when there were only two messages from Gu Fan, this time there was an additional message sent from my phone—just three simple characters.
“……?!?”
When I understood the meaning behind those three characters, my brain immediately buzzed, as if a nuclear bomb had detonated inside my head.
My cat ears twitched and twisted in turmoil, darting back and forth, while the tail behind me stiffened so forcefully it felt like it might break free from my spine and flee to a silent place where no living thing existed.
All my muscles lost control.
Before my shocked mind could reconnect with my body, I faintly heard a stranger shouting from a distance.
Instinctively, my eyes turned toward the source of the voice, where a security guard in a black-and-blue uniform was huffing and puffing as he hurried over, holding a riot control baton.
Was he coming to take me away? Perfect. As long as I could disappear from this world, I wouldn’t have to face what was coming next.
Gu Fan would see this message sooner or later. And since this contact app was official and unlike other chat apps, messages here couldn’t be retracted.
That meant the moment the fortune teller sent that message for me, I was only a matter of time away from social death.
Would I die? No. More than death, what terrified me was how Gu Fan would respond to this message.
Would he be so disgusted that he’d curse me out and block me?
If I changed my phone number and came looking for him again, he’d probably block me again, calling me a crazy woman.
No one liked a lunatic who clung relentlessly.
Even if I had some advantage in looks and figure, it would be easy for Gu Fan to find girls just like me, or even better.
Take the girls in school, for example. Shiratori, with her family background, appearance, and natural elegant aura, was far more refined than a country bumpkin catgirl like me.
In our usual interactions, I was like a clumsy wild ox, burying my head and using my rough, unpolished ways to convey my feelings—this thing called “liking” Gu Fan.
But if Shiratori did the same, she’d be more reserved, expressing her feelings with extreme gentleness and subtlety.
And immersed in such a tender atmosphere, Gu Fan would naturally accept her confession, reciprocating with love tens of times warmer than what he gave me.
Ugh, no, no, I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t willing. I wanted Gu Fan to be good only to me. Shiratori and anyone else could just get lost!
Frozen in place, my mind completely shut down. I could only let my thoughts run wild in my heart, like wild horses galloping across a boundless prairie, trampling the grass made of neurons beneath their hooves—like blades cutting smoothly through my brain.
Reason… vanished.
I sat down in a daze, helplessly watching the wild horses ravage this once-beautiful grassland of my mind, unable to think of any way to stop them.
Just as I was about to give up on myself, a faint voice floated in.
“Little catgirl, I’ve got to retreat for now. I’m leaving you this folding chair. I hope you and your beloved tie the knot someday. When you have children, I’ll come back to see you.”
The somewhat comical tone seemed to hold some special magic, holding those wild horses firmly in place.
I was also drawn back to the real world.
When I finally came to, standing before me was the panting security guard, leaning on his riot baton, coughing as he asked haltingly,
“Little miss, are you okay? That guy’s a con artist. He’s been scamming people here for a while. You didn’t fall for it, did you?”
“…Maybe,” I answered vaguely, then glanced around. The fortune teller’s figure had already disappeared somewhere unknown.
Just like last time, she vanished suddenly like a magician’s trick in a gust of wind.
Perhaps the profession of fortune teller included the skill of disappearing quickly. I’d have to ask her sometime, so I could run to a quiet place to vent when I found myself in a mess.
After sending the security guard away, I silently twisted open my bottle of flower tea and lifted my head to sip it slowly.
The floral fragrance and faint sweetness slid down my throat, soothing the restlessness in my chest.
Because of my irritated mood, I completely forgot my initial plan to go to the restroom.
Only after drinking the entire bottle did the urge to pee surge back, making me realize something was wrong.
Just my luck—right as I stood up, folded the cloth stool, and headed toward the bathroom, my phone suddenly rang in my skirt pocket.
I picked it up and unlocked the screen. Gu Fan’s reply glared right at me.
“Are you free later? Let’s meet.”
I was doomed. Looks like I’d have to hold it in a while longer.
“As usual” — this phrase could hardly have described me better.
After a long time, I finally played a class basketball game with Fang Cheng during lunch break.
He’d been assigned to the advanced class on another floor, so we rarely got to meet.
During the break after the game, while chatting casually, we unintentionally touched on the times I’d occasionally skipped class.
“Gu Fan, what’s the relationship between you and that catgirl from childhood?” Fang Cheng asked, tilting his head back as he downed his energy drink.
I blinked, my fingers fidgeting with the plastic wrapper, trying to hide my confusion and unease.
Since Zhinian escaped from the classroom right before my eyes, I hadn’t seen her for days. None of my friends around me mentioned her name either.
Thinking about it, they didn’t know her well—at most, they’d seen her a few times last semester when she came into class to take me away.
For such a disruptive presence, even young students like them instinctively chose to keep silent, as if Zhinian had never existed.
If Fang Cheng hadn’t brought her up, even I—who’d known her for years—might have completely forgotten that fragile little black catgirl surrounded by others.
On the way back to the classroom, passing by the old auditorium, I paused for a moment, then decided to ask Shiratori to get the teacher to excuse me from the first class.
Shiratori briefly asked where I’d go, and when she learned I’d be resting in the auditorium for a class, she smiled gently and promised to bring a refreshing tea drink after class.
I nodded perfunctorily, sending Shiratori and my classmates off, then entered the auditorium alone.
Climbing the slightly rusty iron stairs to the second floor, I found the sunlit corner room.
The somewhat cramped room held just two wooden chairs with backs and a student desk, lonely in their place.
Golden sunlight streamed in through a skylight above the wall, illuminating the drifting dust with a faint golden edge that danced wildly like lively sprites.
I touched my pocket and realized the tissues I’d brought were used up during lunch break.
The intensity of basketball made me sweat, and Zhinian used to bring a big pack of wet wipes waiting for me in a corner of the stands.
Shiratori had brought a small pack of tissues today, but with so many classmates playing, they quickly ran out.
Walking over to the chair closer to the aisle, I expected it to be covered in dust, but it only had a thin layer, clearly someone had been here before me.
My heart inexplicably quickened, as if hoping for someone’s arrival.
I imagined if she were here, would she bend down and carefully wipe the chair?
Could it be Zhinian?
I checked the other wooden chair and the desk in the middle; neither had been wiped and were still thickly covered in dust.
If Zhinian had been here, she’d probably have chosen the seat nearer the inner side of the cubicle, and she would have wiped both chairs and the desk—not just one chair.
With this deduction, my heart sank a little. I still hoped it was Zhinian who had come, not someone else.
“Ha… I really am selfish and self-centered,” I muttered to myself.
This cubicle wasn’t my own sanctuary; it was a public space open to anyone. Besides me and Zhinian, it was only natural others came here too.
After ironically laughing at myself, I bent down and gently wiped the thin layer of dust off the chair.
Before, this was always done by that little black catgirl, who was always one step ahead of me. Now without her, I had to do it myself.
Brushing the dust off my palm, I sat down on the chair, lazily tilting my head back to stare at the peeling white ceiling.
How long had it been since I last came here? The last time was after the final exams, together with Zhinian.
We’d drank drinks together, checking exam answers.
Zhinian held my test paper, cross-checking it, her cat tail excitedly twitching behind her like a dog’s, occasionally brushing my shoulder, making me want to grab it and knead it just to feel it.
But after all, catgirls were a special group among humans. They weren’t cats or dogs; those animals’ habits couldn’t fully apply to them. The differences between catgirls were also vast.
After all, sometimes the differences between people were even greater than those between humans and dogs.
Having been forced to witness much of humanity’s cruelty in middle school due to special experiences, I deeply understood this.
So by high school, I found any violence or bullying deeply detestable.
Fortunately, the discipline committee in this school was well managed. So far, I hadn’t heard of anyone being bullied.
After zoning out for a long time, I sprang up and lazily stretched inside the cubicle.
After basketball during lunch break, my body was still hot. Without proper stretching, I’d definitely wake up sore tomorrow.
While twisting my waist to relax my side, I caught sight of something dusty in the drawer of the desk.
Leaning closer, I saw it was a book.
To be precise, it was a poetry collection—Borges’s.
I wasn’t well-versed in poetry; the books I’d read were mostly classical masterpieces assigned by my Chinese teacher.
Seeing this book made me more certain the last person to come here wasn’t Zhinian.
She didn’t like reading, much less poetry.
Imagining the clumsy little black catgirl holding this poetry book, elegantly reciting like a literary maiden, made me chuckle.
Most likely, Zhinian would hold the book awkwardly with her “airplane ears,” grimacing as she struggled to read Western poems full of emotion.
The cover bore the school library’s stamp. Between the thin pages was a pale green bookmark.
Opening the page along the bookmark, I read a passage of Borges’s poetry.
“Each passerby in our lives is unique. They leave some marks, and take away parts of our breath. Some take much, others leave nothing at all. This precisely proves that two souls do not meet by chance.”