Su Yuqing’s interrogation rang hollow in the empty living room, like a punch landing on cotton.
“You’ve not only ruined my weekend, you’ve even ruined everyone else’s along with it! Do you understand…!?”
In response to her fury, Zhi Ai merely curled up lazily on the sofa.
She didn’t even lift her eyelids, and her honeyed voice carried a tone of indifference that suggested the matter had nothing to do with her.
“I’m so sorry, meow. I really have no interest in ruining the weekends of any human other than yours~”
To her, all the external noise and complaints seemed like nothing more than insignificant background noise.
“No, you’ve already ruined it.”
Su Yuqing’s voice carried a weary tremble.
She felt as if her anger had been drained away, leaving only an endless void.
“It’s because of those two shitty performances you suddenly added! Everyone at the Agency has to come in and work unpaid overtime on their weekend just for you! Do you really understand…!?”
“Tsk, then they really are pitiful~”
Zhi Ai finally opened her Liuli-colored eyes slightly.
Her gaze didn’t hold sympathy, but rather looked as if she were admiring a small, interesting tragedy.
“I think you should pity yourself first!”
Su Yuqing tried to regain some momentum, but her words lacked conviction.
“Without them — without their hard work — your performance won’t happen no matter what.”
Her words sounded like a statement of fact, yet also like a final, futile struggle.
“Though, it might be better if it doesn’t happen.”
A massive wave of powerlessness suddenly swept over her, causing even the strength to argue to vanish.
“If it’s cancelled earlier, everyone can have some peace and quiet…”
The sentence was as light as a sigh.
It was less for Zhi Ai to hear and more an expression of her true inner thoughts.
Instead of continuing to be entangled in this twisted relationship, it would be better for everything to come to a screeching halt.
After finishing her sentence, she no longer looked at Zhi Ai’s reaction.
She silently bent over and picked up the phone from the floor — the device that had just been ‘formatted’ and seemed to have lost part of its soul as well.
A cold sensation transferred from the surface to her fingertips.
She turned around like a puppet whose strength had been sucked out, her steps floating as she shuffled toward her room one step at a time.
The bedroom door closed softly behind her with a light ‘click’.
Like a period at the end of a sentence, it temporarily isolated her from the suffocating world outside.
***
The next day, Wednesday.
Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the blinds, cutting alternating stripes of light and shadow across the desk, yet it couldn’t dispel the low pressure surrounding Su Yuqing.
She sat at her workstation, her gaze unfocused as she stared at the computer screen.
The dense schedule on it looked like indecipherable incantations.
The conflict from last night, the forcibly deleted photos, and the sensation of the collar that still seemed to linger on her neck…
Everything was chaotically intertwined in her mind.
“Senior? Senior?”
“Senior — !!!”
An urgent and worried voice, sounding as if it came from far away, finally pierced through her thick wall of thoughts.
Su Yuqing snapped back to reality, meeting Sakura Onodera’s large, clear eyes, which were filled with confusion.
“Huh? What… what is it, Sakura?”
Her voice held a hint of hoarseness and panic, as if she had just been startled awake.
“Why didn’t you pick up your phone all morning, Senior?”
Sakura tilted her head.
Her well-behaved bob hair and signature pink tips bounced as she spoke with undisguised doubt.
“Ah~ so you’re talking about that.”
Su Yuqing instinctively reached for the phone in her pocket.
Her heart skipped a beat, and a forced smile quickly appeared on her face.
Her brain worked rapidly to find an excuse.
“I accidentally dropped my phone into the elevator gap last night. Oh, well, you know how it is. In an old community like mine, Property Management is deathly slow at handling these things.”
She tried to make her tone sound light and natural, yet she couldn’t hide her guilt.
“Is that really how it is, Senior?”
Sakura’s gaze held a hint of scrutiny.
She didn’t seem to fully believe the loophole-ridden explanation.
“Yes, yes. That’s really how it is.”
Su Yuqing nodded vigorously, trying to increase her credibility, while her eyes involuntarily drifted elsewhere.
“Then why…”
Sakura’s gaze slowly lowered, landing on the phone Su Yuqing had carelessly placed on the desk.
Her voice trailed off with a subtle tone that suggested she saw through everything.
“…is your phone right here?”
“Eh…?”
Su Yuqing froze.
She followed Sakura’s gaze and was instantly speechless.
“And,” Sakura leaned in a bit closer, lowering her voice further as she continued teasingly, “you haven’t even changed the phone case…”
Seeing her lie exposed to her face, Su Yuqing’s cheeks instantly burned.
She was so embarrassed she wanted to find a hole to crawl into.
“Ah, just a joke! Just a joke!”
She waved her hands hurriedly, trying to cover it up with a dry laugh, and abruptly changed the subject.
“So! Sakura, it’s almost time to get off work. Did you come to see me for something important?”
She groaned inwardly, hoping this little episode would pass quickly.
“Here.”
Sakura didn’t seem to intend to press further.
She handed a stack of printed documents to Su Yuqing.
“This is the final confirmed list of personnel for those two Special Performances this weekend.”
“Oh, let me see — “
Su Yuqing took the list, forcing herself to focus on the paper.
However, after just a few glances, her brows furrowed tightly, her face written with disbelief.
“Huh? How… how did everyone suddenly come back to work? I remember when you showed me yesterday, wasn’t there a huge number of people taking leave?”
The sudden change left her confused and even slightly uneasy.
“Because,” Sakura’s face lit up with a ‘you’ll never guess’ expression as she explained, “Manager Huang, the great leader of our Little Paw, suddenly found his conscience. Last night, he made a temporary decision to give everyone working this weekend triple the overtime pay.”
“Even though everyone still calls him a psycho, after all, we’re all just workers trying to make a living. No one is going to turn their back on money, no matter what~”
Sakura’s tone carried the resonance and helplessness of a fellow employee.
“That… makes sense…”
Su Yuqing murmured, but suspicion grew in her heart.
Manager Huang’s “discovery of a conscience”?
It sounded like a fairy tale.
A cold thought quietly surfaced in her mind:
‘I’m afraid the will of that cat is operating behind this again.’
Did she exert some kind of influence to ensure the weekend performances would go smoothly?
This realization sent a chill through her.
‘Has that girl Zhi Ai’s paranoia about controlling me spread to absolute control over my work environment and even the weekends of everyone around me?’
“So, Senior.”
Sakura’s voice interrupted her thoughts, carrying a hint of curiosity and inquiry.
“What do you think the final result of these two Special Performances this weekend will be…?”
Su Yuqing looked up, her gaze passing through the glass partition of the office as if she wanted to look further — at that weekend she might never be able to keep her appointment for.
She forced an extremely bitter smile, her voice so soft it was nearly inaudible.
“That… is really hard to say.”
Rather than saying it was “hard to say,” it was more of a deep sense of powerlessness and resignation.
She knew better than anyone that under the control of that willful and powerful cat, any plan could be easily overturned.
That stinking cat’s weekend performance was destined to continue, while her own carefully anticipated date — the one concerning her past and her liberation — probably…
Really wouldn’t happen under such powerful interference and restraint.
The sunlight outside was still bright, yet it couldn’t reach the darkening shadows deep in Su Yuqing’s heart.
She felt herself being wrapped tighter and tighter in an invisible net, while the weaver of that net elegantly licked her Small Claws, enjoying this game where she held total control with her whole heart…
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