Chapter 3: Suffocation

“I don’t know! That morning, when I found you motionless, I was so sad — “

“I really thought you were dead!”

Su Yuqing desperately defended herself, her voice trembling violently from immense fear and surging indignation.

Each word sounded as if it were being painfully squeezed out of her throat.

“It was Mother! Maybe it was Mother… It was Mother who thought you had… left us forever, so she… That’s why I…”

She tried to piece together the truth of that blurred morning using logic and memory, attempting to prove her innocence to the hate-driven soul before her.

However, this rushed explanation sounded like the most pathetic and shameful evasion in Chiai’s ears.

“Nonsense — !!”

Chiai suddenly screamed.

Her voice lost all the sweetness an Idol should possess, sounding like a piece of cold glass being crushed underfoot, sharply piercing the stagnant, oppressive air of the room.

The carefully maintained innocence and sweetness of “Kasahana Chiai” on her face shattered like a fragile mask, falling to the floor of reality.

In its place was a hideous rage erupting from the depths of her soul, born of total betrayal and being forgotten.

It was as if this cat, disguised as a human, had finally torn through the meticulously woven human skin to reveal sharp, glinting fangs.

“Cough — !”

An irresistible force suddenly seized Su Yuqing’s throat, brutally cutting off her unfinished words and her breath.

To be honest:

Chiai’s sense of power when performing on stage as an Idol was extremely captivating.

But when that power — the same power that used to passionately wave a microphone and ignite the audience’s enthusiasm — was applied without reservation to her own fragile neck, Su Yuqing felt as if her consciousness were being rapidly pulled from her body by an invisible hand.

Her vision began to blur, dark spots flickered at the edges of her eyes, and her eardrums throbbed with the desperate roar of her heart.

She tried in vain to use her hands, which were still bound by nylon rope, to pull at Chiai’s arms, but Chiai’s fingers were like iron bands, unmoving.

“How is it? How is it? How is it?!”

Chiai leaned down, her beautiful face — a mix of anger and excitement — nearly touching Su Yuqing’s face, which was flushed from a lack of oxygen.

Her sweet voice now sounded like a demon’s whisper:

“Do you feel desperate now? Helpless? Just like I did in that dark, cold cardboard box? Despair is exactly right, meow~!”

Watching Su Yuqing’s body instinctively twitch and struggle under her control due to suffocation, the little kitty who had personally caused all of this unexpectedly showed a twisted smile, a mix of pain and pleasure.

A morbid sense of dominance over the life and death of another flickered wildly in her glass-like eyes.

“It’s okay if you want me to let go, you know?”

She tilted her head, saying the cruelest things in the most innocent tone.

“Beg me. As long as you properly and sincerely kneel and beg this kitty, then this kitty will naturally show some mercy and let you, this disobedient pet, have a good breath of air~”

However, only broken “he-he” sounds could escape Su Yuqing’s throat, and her pupils had already begun to dilate.

Without her even noticing, Chiai’s voice grew lower and slower.

The burning hatred that fueled her revenge seemed to hit a cold obstacle in the face of Su Yuqing’s fading life signs.

Soon.

Even though Su Yuqing did not ultimately utter a clear plea as she had hoped, Chiai’s fingers, which had been tightly gripping the throat of fate, gradually loosened from her former master’s neck with an imperceptible trace of hesitation.

“Did you… pass out…?”

Chiai remained straddling Su Yuqing, her thighs clearly feeling the disordered yet persistent beating of the heart beneath the other woman’s chest.

This faint vitality caused her to feel a strange irritability and — a hint of emptiness.

Was it true that even humans, who seemed so powerful and could easily decide a kitten’s fate, were ultimately such fragile beings?

So fragile that if she used just a bit more strength right now, they would easily break.

A distant, blurred memory bubbled up in Chiai’s heart like a bubble rising from the bottom of a lake.

It seemed that back when she was still a Cat, she had always… been quite afraid of humans.

She still remembered that when she was very, very young and had just been brought into this home, there were a few times when she had nearly been choked to the point of suffocation by this clumsy owner who didn’t quite know how to handle a kitten during play.

Was the fear she felt in those moments the same as what Su Yuqing had felt one minute or one second ago?

‘Then — at least before I get completely bored of this revenge game, please don’t die so easily.’

This thought inexplicably took hold in Chiai’s heart.

Thinking this, she removed the Cat Paw Gloves she always wore as part of her “Idol Kasahana Chiai” identity, revealing the slender, fair human fingers beneath.

She extended her right index finger toward the red, swollen area between Su Yuqing’s chin and the old Red Collar, where a mark had been left from the rough dragging earlier.

A sharp claw belonging only to a Cat quietly extended with a flick of her mind.

Using only the tip of her finger, Chiai gave the broken skin of the red mark a light, careless scratch.

A small trail of blood immediately appeared, and several crimson droplets slowly oozed out.

Chiai leaned down, bringing her warm lips close.

Her tongue tasted the strange, pungent, and sweet tang of blood that belonged only to Su Yuqing.

This taste caused an ancient feline instinct within her to quietly awaken.

Contrary to what most humans imagined, cats were, in fact, creatures with cruelty etched into their very bones.

In many cases, they hunted smaller animals — such as mice, birds, or insects — not merely to fill their stomachs.

More often than not, it was simply for sport.

It was purely to enjoy the chase, the capture, and… the pure pleasure that came from personally tormenting a “toy” that was still alive, struggling, and terrified.

Su Yuqing vaguely remembered these words from the depths of her memory.

It seemed that a friend who knew a lot about feline habits had said them to her, half-jokingly and half-seriously, right after she had adopted Xiaozhi from the bushes by the roadside.

Back then, she hadn’t fully understood the deeper meaning behind those words; Su Yuqing had only thought they were an exaggeration.

But now, those words echoed clearly in her mind as she felt like she was drowning in the abyss of suffocation, sounding like a dark prophecy.