Wei Changli tensed up completely, instinctively leaning back against the edge of the sink counter. He slightly averted his face and whispered, “I’ve finished peeling them. I’m leaving now. Standing here… I’m in the way.”
Yan Xu’s gaze was like a soft-lit snowflake, quietly clinging to him.
In the next moment, the man suddenly leaned down, his breath sweeping across Wei Changli’s cheek so closely they were almost touching.
Wei Changli had the illusion of being kissed. Or rather, if he offered even the slightest response, the other would act like a predator discovering a prey’s weakness, unhesitatingly occupying the territory he was currently surveying.
“Thank you.”
Just as Wei Changli thought Yan Xu’s lips were about to descend, he heard him say those words instead.
The man stepped back. In an instant, the inescapable sense of control that had enveloped Wei Changli vanished.
Yan Xu’s expression was calm, betraying no internal waves. He raised his hand to place the cooking wine back into the cupboard securely, then took the bowl of peeled lotus seeds: “Very clean.”
It was as if he were completely unmoved by the heart-fluttering accident of nearly colliding.
Wei Changli awkwardly raised a hand to brush the tip of his nose. He was about to say something when he heard a dull thud from the living room, followed by Mia’s frantic “meow meow” cries.
“I—I’ll go check.”
He uttered the words hastily and turned to leave, failing to see Yan Xu’s hand tighten around the bowl of lotus seeds.
…
Returning to the living room, Wei Changli found his phone dropped on the carpet, while the “culprit,” Little Mia, was guiltily biting her own tail.
Worried the kitten might fall, Wei Changli propped up her hindquarters and moved her back a bit. He bent down to pick up the phone and discovered two missed calls that had arrived at some point.
Caller: Uncle Guo. Note: Cat Search – Heping Street West.
Wei Changli’s expression changed instantly. He unlocked the phone, and a picture sent by Uncle Guo popped up on the messaging app.
The person who took the photo had poor technique; not only did they fail to focus, but the image also suffered from severe motion blur. Yet even so, Wei Changli captured that one kitten with a coat color extremely close to Mischief’s at a single glance.
It seemed to have just jumped down from a snow-covered eave, light paws touching the ground, leaving only a blurred silhouette for the photographer.
“Beep… beep… beep…”
Wei Changli hurriedly called back. His eyes were fixed on the photo, and his fingertips holding the phone felt as if they were on fire—burning and trembling faintly at the same time.
Perhaps the blizzard was affecting the signal; the phone rang nearly to the end before someone picked up.
Uncle Guo on the other end was a long-time manual laborer with a coarse, loud voice:
“Hello? Little Wei, is that you? Why did you just pick up? Take a look, is this that cat you’ve been looking for?”
Wei Changli stared intently, zooming in on the blurry photo again and again. The kitten looked somewhat distorted under the shaky lens and low pixel quality; it looked very similar, yet there seemed to be something off.
Unable to judge for a moment, he could only ask: “Uncle Guo, is that kitten with you now?”
“Not with me. I’m an old man; how could I catch that thing?” Uncle Guo shouted. “Didn’t I see those cat photos you gave me? I thought it looked just like it! It’s quite clever; it ran off the moment it saw a person. I couldn’t catch up, so I called you.”
Wei Changli pressed: “Did you see which way it ran?”
“How could I see that clearly?” Uncle Guo said. “I just thought I’d give you a call. Mostly, the snow is getting heavier and heavier. If it’s still running around outside, won’t it definitely freeze to death?”
Wei Changli felt a chill run through him. His brows were knit tight, his gaze stabbing into the blurred pixels like a nail. There was too little useful information in the image; the trace of that kitten felt more like an untimely, fatal, and ethereal hope.
Is it really Mischief?
On the other end, Uncle Guo kept asking, “Does it look like it?” and “Are you coming or not?” Wei Changli tried to find the words, but his throat felt blocked by something hard; he couldn’t utter a single complete sentence.
Suddenly, the phone was taken from his hand. He turned to see Yan Xu putting the call on speaker, about to ask a question, but a series of “beeps” came from the receiver.
The call had disconnected due to signal issues.
He tried to call back, only to hear a busy tone.
Wei Changli sat on the sofa, his mind briefly going blank. He turned his gaze toward the window; the world was a blinding, piercing white.
“The phone.” He spoke to ask for his belongings back, not pursuing the nearly over-the-line behavior.
Yan Xu said nothing, merely handing the phone back to him.
Wei Changli obsessively looked at the photo one more time. He turned to Yan Xu, wanting to use an inquiry to strengthen his internal psychological suggestion that they “looked alike,” but suddenly froze.
He saw the other man lost in thought, head slightly lowered, hair obscuring his downcast eyes, lips pursed, and jaw tight.
“You don’t think it looks like him?” Wei Changli asked.
Yan Xu raised his eyes. Those beautiful eyes were like a cold, raw mist—deep to the point of being somber.
It looks very much like him.
Although it was just a blurry, smeared photo, and although the coat patterns of tabby cats often look similar, the kitten in the image still looked just like Mischief. Both in physique and aura, it was exactly the same as the Mischief in his memory.
But Yan Xu knew clearly that Mischief was no longer alive.
When he had accidentally discovered the kitten in that stew pot, he had extracted its DNA after secretly moving it. He personally analyzed the genetic sequence of that animal corpse and confirmed it was consistent with the genetic test he had done for Mischief three years ago.
Therefore, the kitten in the photo could not possibly be Mischief.
A seemingly simple and enthusiastic old man was using an ambiguous photo at the exact moment a blizzard descended on Ningcheng to provoke Wei Changli into going out.
Venturing out in this weather was a death sentence.
The atmosphere in the living room became subtle due to the silence.
Wei Changli didn’t understand Yan Xu’s reaction, but his heart was pricked inexplicably. Though it lasted only an instant—like the flick of a fish’s tail—it was painful, a bone-chilling kind of pain. He wanted to pull out this thorn, but subconsciously he didn’t dare move, as if pulling it out would make his heart bleed.
Alike or not. He stopped asking.
He scooped little Mia into his arms. The warmth of the kitten’s body seeped through her soft fur. She curled up in the human’s embrace, letting out a contented, comfortable purr.
A cat’s heart beats twice as fast as a human’s. Wei Changli could feel Mia’s heart “thump-thumping,” lively as a little drum; his fingertips rose and fell with it.
In fact, he had initially been quite resistant to animals. Aside from Mischief, whom he had picked up five years ago in a moment of soft-heartedness, he had never interacted with such furry creatures before—
To say he had never interacted with them wasn’t quite accurate. His brother, Wei Changjun, had once meticulously selected two noble-blooded, racing-grade horses for him, but restricted his riding training in the name of safety. Those two horses, worth tens of millions, never saw the racetrack until the day they died; instead, they appeared more often in photographs and newspapers.
Thus, three years ago, Wei Changjun had looked down on Mischief when Wei Changli brought him to the main residence, considering him a stray with no pedigree. Though he didn’t show much on the surface, the next day he secretly ordered the nanny to throw the cat out. He even perfunctorily told Wei Changli that such wild beasts were “fierce by nature,” “couldn’t be tamed,” and “couldn’t be kept,” and that giving them affection was merely a sign of weakness.
Wei Changli didn’t know his family had deliberately abandoned the cat and tried to find him many times, but Mischief never appeared.
Three years ago, his psychological state wasn’t great to begin with; his illness stemmed from his mind, making his body weak as well. Once, while walking on a forest path below the manor, he felt lightheaded and nearly fainted. With no one around, he sat alone on a rock to recover.
At that exact moment, a furry head nuzzled his hand.
Mischief stared at him with emerald-green eyes. After letting out two “meows,” he stuck out his tongue and licked Wei Changli’s hand. He leaped lightly into Wei Changli’s embrace, paws resting on his shoulders, sniffing close to confirm he was okay before turning and vanishing into the mountain woods.
Later, Wei Changli found out the nanny had thrown Mischief onto a remote road three kilometers away. That road happened to be the transport route for specialty ingredients; not long before, a truck carrying fresh river seafood had overturned, and the stench of fish was overpowering and lingered for a long time. Yet Mischief had still run back and had been lingering near the Wei main residence, even following Wei Changli from a distance from time to time, though never approaching him.
Because the cat thought he didn’t want him anymore.
It took Wei Changli a long time to coax the kitten back. From then on, Mischief became more and more clingy, but also more sensitive than before—almost suffering from “abandonment” sequelae.
Wei Changli knew that feeling.
So he would spend a lot of time and patience accompanying the kitten. But this time, with the fall of the Wei family, he had to scramble for a living, and his care for Mischief had indeed been neglected.
Wei Changli always felt that some action of his had caused Mischief to feel “abandoned” again, which was why the cat refused to show himself. But as long as he persisted in his search, the kitten would eventually come back.
And now, a timely photo—perhaps it was their destined final reunion.
Wei Changli stroked down the kitten’s back as usual, but the slight difference in texture pulled him out of his memories. The sharp tabby cat before him vanished as his focus returned; into his view came Mia, lying belly-up with her toes splayed out, biting her own tail and playing happily with herself.
The young man first gave a permissive smile, but his gaze turned quiet. After a moment of thought, he looked up.
“I’m preparing to go back,” Wei Changli said. “I won’t trouble you to host me any longer.”
Yan Xu’s long lashes flickered slightly. He spoke, uttering only two words: “No good.”
Wei Changli looked at him: “You just said you wouldn’t stop me.”
Yan Xu looked back at him.
The young man’s eyes were pulled by a spark of hope, burning with persistence.
The surroundings were silent. After a long while, Wei Changli was the first to avert his gaze.
He wasted no more time, first checking traffic information on his phone—city arteries were indeed blocked, but a great advantage of the old city was that it was interconnected. If he took the outer ring road to the rural roads, then bypassed two urban villages full of intersecting alleys, he could reach Heping Street West where Uncle Guo was.
Having determined the route, Wei Changli clicked into a WeChat group. This was a simple gray-market trading network filled with “black car” (illegal taxi) drivers who didn’t qualify for official ride-hailing platforms. They would go anywhere for money; he had joined it by accident when searching for Mischief before.
The car rental message he edited spun several times in the weak signal before sending. No one in the group replied. The young man gritted his teeth and added another two thousand to the already staggeringly high price.
Before long, the silent message group finally acted like a glacier hitting warmth, erupting with several replies containing phone numbers and locations.
Wei Changli picked the nearest location and dialed. However, at that exact moment, Yan Xu—who had been watching everything unfold—suddenly leaned down. His hand propped against the sofa back, pinning Wei Changli directly into a corner of the sofa, making him unable to move.
In an instant, they were extremely close. Within inches, Wei Changli froze with the call halfway through. His hand was grabbed by Yan Xu, then forced open.
The phone, currently dialing, slid down due to gravity and was caught by Yan Xu.
The call luckily connected. A stranger’s male voice came through; he said “Hello?” twice, and receiving no response, he began to haggle without wasting words, shouting that he must add another five hundred in this ghost weather.
“No need,” Yan Xu answered. Ignoring the voice on the other end, he hung up.
“What are you doing?” Wei Changli tried to salvage it, but failing, he pushed him anxiously.
But the man not only remained unmoved, he used his knee to pry Wei Changli’s legs apart. His entire being, from top to bottom, broke through social distance, adjusting into an even more aggressive posture.
Wei Changli’s expression changed: “Let go of me.”
Yan Xu didn’t move. Beneath his calm gaze hid a thread of cold and bizarre emotion, almost as uncontrollable as the blizzard brewing outside the window.