The empty bedroom felt like a shell drained of sound, sinking into the dimness of the approaching dusk.
Kasahana Chiai stood alone in the center of the room, like a Liuli sculpture forgotten by time.
She instinctively sniffed the air, just as she had when she was a little cat, trying to catch a scent that could settle her soul.
“It’s fading…”
A whisper, barely audible, escaped her lips, carrying a slight tremor she hadn’t expected.
This room, which she once considered her only nest, the warm scent of “that person”… was irretrievably thinning.
It was like sand between her fingers; no matter how tightly she clenched her fist, she could only watch it slip away.
“No! That’s not right!”
She jerked her head, her voice suddenly rising, sharp and full of warning, as if scolding her own pathetic self.
What kind of Master was she?!
That foolish woman who could be unsettled by a single call from the past… why did she still have the power to sway her emotions?!
“Ha…!!!”
She inhaled deeply, almost greedily, as if trying to use that breath to prop up her collapsing internal walls.
Facing the room where the scent was vanishing, and facing the part of her soul that still craved warmth, she made a silent, fierce declaration:
‘Kasahana Chiai! Look closely! You have long since stopped needing the pity or companionship of any human! You crawled back from Hell, not to relive old dreams! You don’t need it anymore!!!’
However, the dam built of words was fragile before the tsunami of instinct.
A deeply ironic moment occurred.
Before the echoes of her high-pitched internal declaration had even faded, her feet moved as if pulled by invisible threads, betraying all her fervor.
They carried her body, silently shuffling out of the “unsafe” bedroom and heading straight toward the living room with a clear goal.
Finally, with the submission of a loser, she threw her entire self into the embrace of that old sofa.
The sofa springs gave a heavy groan, like a tired sigh.
Zhi Ai curled up stiffly, as if engaged in a futile struggle against the last of her pride.
But the yearning rooted in her Feline Instinct, like a surging tide, eventually shattered all defenses of reason.
“Meow~”
A whimper, carrying the sense of completely surrendering her resistance, escaped her throat.
She stopped struggling and let her body relax completely, sinking deep into the folds of the sofa like melting snow, pressing her cheeks and body as closely as possible against the cool fabric.
This was it…
When her skin touched the slightly coarse fabric, a scent so familiar it made her heart tighten wrapped around her like an unsealed ancient spell, instantly drowning her.
‘Here… her scent… is the strongest…’
Yes, this old sofa, the scent of Su Yuqing on it, was the only thing real enough for her to touch at this moment.
The lingering sweetness of shampoo and the base scent of sun-dried cotton… all of it intertwined, forming an invisible but more irresistible placebo than any physical object.
This scent was like a rusty key, prying open the door she had deliberately locked deep in her memories.
“Cough, cough… Xiaozhi… I think I’m sick… Ah… my head is so dizzy…”
In her memory, a younger Su Yuqing curled up weakly under the covers.
Her originally rosy cheeks were flushed like the sunset, and her breath was ragged and hot, like a small set of bellows.
She tried to open her watery eyes and reached out with difficulty, wanting to touch the younger version of herself perched at the foot of the bed.
Her gaze was full of total reliance and a longing for comfort, as if she were her only lifeline.
However, this warm scene was instantly torn apart.
“Oh! What did I say?! I’ve told you a thousand times not to keep these stray things of unknown origin! You can’t even count how many bacteria and viruses they carry! So filthy!”
Mother’s sharp, biting voice splashed into the room like shards of cold glass.
She stood at the doorway holding a glass of water, her brow furrowed in a knot, her face showing blatant disgust and accusation.
“Look! See! It’s happening now! You silly girl wouldn’t listen to your elders, insisted on keeping it, and now you’re infected. Are you happy now?! I say it’s that thing’s fault!”
Even while dazed with fever, the little Su Yuqing shook her head vigorously and argued urgently with a raspy voice, “No… Mom… it’s not like that… This has nothing to do with Xiaozhi… I did it to myself… I accidentally kicked the blankets off last night and caught a cold… Don’t blame her…”
“Hmph! Still being stubborn! Protecting it even when you’re this sick!”
Mother took a few steps closer and thudded the glass of water onto the nightstand, her finger almost poking Su Yuqing’s burning forehead.
“I’m telling you, Su Yuqing! Your resistance right now is like a sheet of paper! You absolutely cannot stay in the same room as this Source of Germs! What if it’s some terrible Zoonosis? How would I explain it to your father?! Right now! Immediately! Get it out! It is not allowed in the bedroom anymore!”
At that moment, Zhi Ai, perched at the foot of the bed, clearly saw the helpless tears welling up in the girl’s eyes.
At the same time, she understood the core accusation in those words — ‘It was you who brought the germs.’
‘It was you who made her sick.’
An unprecedented cold chill crawled up her spine and filled her entire body.
That night, it rained very, very hard.
The sound of the downpour crashed against the windowpanes like a dirge played for someone.
Zhi Ai was forcibly isolated in the cold living room.
Her small body curled up in her cat bed, but she felt colder than if she were exposed to the storm outside.
She pricked up her ears, catching every tiny sound from the bedroom.
Whether it was the girl’s suppressed coughing or her heavy breathing, each sound pierced her heart like a needle.
A vague and terrible thought gradually became clear and solidified in her simple, pure feline mind:
‘It’s my presence… that made her sick.’
‘It was I… who brought misfortune.’
‘So, if I weren’t here, would she… get better faster?’
A few days later, when Su Yuqing’s fever finally broke and she was sleeping peacefully in bed, Zhi Ai, the little orange and white cat, made the most painful and resolute decision of her feline life.
She took one last deep look at the crack in the bedroom door, where a faint light and a comforting scent peeked through.
Then, she turned around and, taking advantage of Mother’s inattention, slipped out of the home she considered her whole world like a silent shadow, plunging into the violent curtain of rain outside that seemed ready to swallow everything.
But she didn’t truly leave.
She couldn’t.
She simply hid under the eaves of a house across the street, finding a corner where she could stay out of the rain while clearly seeing the window of Su Yuqing’s home.
She curled her soaked, shivering little body tightly.
Her Liuli eyes didn’t blink once as she stared fixedly at that familiar window, as if her gaze could burn through it.
‘I have to watch her… confirm she’s really better…’
‘Confirm that without a “Source of Germs” like me around, she can smile more happily…’
‘Just… just one more look. Once I confirm she’s safe, I’ll leave… leave forever…’
Rain dripped from the eaves, splashing around Zhi Ai.
Her fur was completely soaked, and the cold made her shake uncontrollably, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the torn agony and despair in her heart.
Just when she was about to freeze solid, that familiar small figure suddenly rushed out of the house!
Su Yuqing hadn’t even put her slippers on properly.
Wearing only thin pajamas, she charged recklessly into the torrential rain.
“Xiaozhi — Xiaozhi, where are you — come out! No one is going to throw you away! It’s my fault! Please come back — “
The girl’s heart-wrenching cries, like the wail of a wounded cub, pierced through the heavy curtain of rain and accurately struck Zhi Ai, who was hiding in the shadows.
She watched the small figure stumbling through the flooded streets.
On her pale little face, rain and tears were wildly intertwined, yet she kept calling her name regardless.
‘This dummy… the biggest dummy in the world!!!’
‘Why did you come out?! The rain is so heavy! You just got better! You’ll get sick again! It’ll be even worse!!!’
Zhi Ai paced anxiously in the shadows, her sharp claws unconsciously scratching the cold concrete.
A powerful impulse made her want to rush out immediately, dive into that warm embrace, and lick away the tears and rain on her face.
But another voice screamed to stop her:
‘No! You’ll hurt her! If you go near her, you’ll only make her sick again!’
While being torn apart by this extreme contradiction and pain, she saw Su Yuqing’s crying stop abruptly.
The girl seemed to have exhausted all her strength.
She crouched by the wet bushes on the roadside, her shoulders shaking violently as she buried her face deep in her knees, letting out broken whimpers.
Those whimpers broke Zhi Ai’s heart more than any loud wailing.
Then, as if guided by fate or some kind of telepathy, Zhi Ai heard a sound escape her throat uncontrollably, carrying endless grievance and longing —
“… Meow.”
The sound was very soft, almost swallowed by the rain.
But Su Yuqing jerked her head up.
On her small face, washed nearly transparent by the rain, those large eyes that had been filled with despair suddenly burst with a brilliance more radiant than a rainbow after a storm when they caught sight of those familiar Liuli eyes behind the bushes.
A smile — a smile mixing tears, rain, and the immense ecstasy of finding what was lost — bloomed on her face.
“Found you…”