There was no moon that night. On the dark, narrow path, a little cat ran unsteadily.
Somehow, her small paws got tangled in a wire mesh, and debris fell from above. Qilan let out a short, startled mew and quickly dodged.
Her cat’s body slammed into a hard container with a clang.
She struggled to get up from the ground. As the dust dispersed along with the clouds, moonlight poured down, illuminating the figure that had stopped just ahead.
The moment Qilan saw Liang Jianshi, she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Her hoarse little throat let out a meow, and she sprinted toward him.
Liang Jianshi ran a few steps forward and crouched down. Qilan crashed into his arms.
The man picked up the cat, who rubbed her furry head against him, wrapped her paws around his neck, and acted coy, her raspy little voice letting out whimpering mews.
Before she could fully process the joy and emotion, Qilan heard a sniffle near her ear. She froze.
Liang Jianshi… was he crying?
Qilan tried to move her head to look, but the man pressed her back with his hand, burying his face deeper into the thick fur on her back. His broad shoulders trembled, restrained.
After a moment, he couldn’t hold himself up anymore and sank into a crouch.
The moonlight stretched across the landscape like an endless sea, and the distant mountains were like silent waves.
At that moment, Qilan suddenly felt that Liang Jianshi looked very lonely. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she felt he was carrying an immense sorrow, the kind that even the most empathetic person in the world could never fully understand.
Liang Jianshi’s overwhelming emotion caught Qilan off guard. She was a little frightened. Carefully, she used her paw pad to stroke his head, her tail swaying against his arm. She tried to comfort him with her small, meager strength.
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
“How did you find Lanlan?” Dr. Lu asked as he looked over the examination report.
Liang Jianshi sat quietly across from him. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, his demeanor like still water, calm and without ripples, just as usual.
“I heard her meow.”
Dr. Lu let out a surprised laugh. “Out of over a thousand cats, you were able to pick out her voice instantly. That’s incredible. She really is your beloved daughter.”
As he looked at the report’s indicators, Dr. Lu’s expression grew somewhat puzzled.
“What is it?”
“Nothing serious. Mild poisoning, probably from some plant in the house that cats shouldn’t be around.”
Liang Jianshi’s voice was a bit hoarse. “I’ll leave it to you.”
“Liang Jianshi, what happened here? You hired so many bodyguards to protect this cat of yours, and yet something like this still happened. She ended up being sold to a cat meat restaurant? How terrifying. If you had arrived just a moment later, the consequences would have been unthinkable.”
“The car was downstairs. I just wasn’t there at the time and didn’t notice immediately.” A simple answer. Dr. Lu paused for a moment, then, feeling he had been a bit too nosy, turned his gaze to the computer.
The same day they had contacted Xiaoran, Liang Jianshi had sent people to guard the area around her parents’ building, but out of respect for privacy, they hadn’t been too close.
To others, Liang Jianshi’s actions might even seem paranoid, yet the accident still happened.
The cars were stationed at the main gate and the garage, but the old woman had slipped out through a broken wall in the residential complex. Carrying a sack in the middle of the night, unnoticed, she had taken advantage of the gap.
Though even the most careful plans can have a flaw, if Liang Jianshi hadn’t been burning with fever at the time, the moment Qilan made a sound, he would have followed it and caught up.
Liang Jianshi sat with a stern face, saying nothing. Unable to bear the silence, Dr. Lu finally broke it. “You should pay more attention to your own health, too. Look at you, your eyes are inflamed, your fever hasn’t broken, you’re a mess. How are you going to take care of my poor Lanlan?”
He reached out to touch Qilan.
Liang Jianshi raised his hand and swatted away Dr. Lu’s reaching fingers with practiced ease.
Dr. Lu looked at his reddened hand and grumbled, “You haven’t changed one bit, still so protective.”
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
After a night of harrowing escape, Qilan was taken to the hospital and then fell asleep curled up in Liang Jianshi’s arms.
Vaguely, she heard voices in the room.
“How was I supposed to know I would suddenly wake up at that time!”
Qilan struggled to lift her heavy eyelids and thought she saw a girl. Whether due to the lighting or something else, she couldn’t quite make out the color of her hair.
As if noticing Qilan waking, the girl’s voice abruptly stopped.
Her mind suddenly felt heavy. Startled, Qilan forced her eyes open and found herself in the dormitory.
Before her was a young man with light brown skin. Seeing her awake, he leaned in with concern.
“Sister, you’re finally awake.”
Qilan sat up in bed, exhausted. “Have you been taking care of me all this time?”
Xiao Xi poured herself a glass of water. “Don’t mention it. You were in such bad shape. If Mr. Liang hadn’t been in an accident and the director hadn’t been away on business, no one would have overlooked your absence. You would have had your wages docked for sure. I managed to keep it under wraps for you.”
Looking at Xiao Xi, whose eyes were red-rimmed, Qilan felt touched. Aside from Tong Tong, he was the only one at the hotel who treated her so well.
“I owe you one. If you ever need anything, just tell me!” Qilan said earnestly. “Through fire and water!”
Xiao Xi laughed heartily. “Then I’ll take you up on being my sister. You can’t go back on that.”
It was time for work, and Xiao Xi had to hurry back to the basement to move things.
Qilan looked at the peach-pink roses on the windowsill, all wilted, and thought of Tong Tong.
She wondered where she had gone on her annual leave. She had been gone so long.
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
After returning to the hotel, the frequency of her switching between human and cat increased significantly, as if making up for all the transformations she had missed while away.
When Qilan woke up in Liang Jianshi’s bed, she vaguely heard a commotion outside.
Though she had been ill, she hadn’t lost any weight. Thanks to Liang Jianshi, Jingwei, and Xiaoran’s feeding, she had grown plump. Now, when she walked, she waddled slightly, like a little wealthy pig.
She stretched her chubby face over the railing to look downstairs and saw the black cat jumping all over Liang Jianshi’s desk. Papers were flying everywhere, and two secretaries were running around in circles trying to catch him.
“Lord Hei, please spare us!”
Lord Hei?
Qilan almost laughed out loud in a human voice.
So the black cat had earned that nickname after being discharged from the hospital. Though Qilan thought “Charcoal Ball Eunuch” sounded cuter.
Just as she was enjoying the show, her body was suddenly lifted into the air, draped like a soft noodle over the man’s strong arm.
Liang Jianshi had come out of the study. He casually scooped up the little cat who had been busy watching the chaos, set her in his arms, and groomed her increasingly thick fur as he gracefully descended the stairs.
The secretaries saw Liang Jianshi, dropped their distressed expressions, and stood at attention to greet him.
Charcoal Ball Eunuch spotted Liang Jianshi and rushed over to bite his feet, as if resenting him for not taking better care of his dream girl.
Before Qilan had woken up, Charcoal Ball Eunuch had already made several moves against Liang Jianshi, knocking over his water cup, leaving paw prints on his contracts, typing gibberish on his keyboard… countless mischievous acts. These days, Liang Jianshi only drinks water from bottles with screw caps.
Now, the black cat bared his teeth at Liang Jianshi and prepared to pounce again.
The two secretaries rushed to stop the ambush, but the white cat leaped down first, raising her paw to strike the black cat.
The moment she raised her paw, Charcoal Ball Eunuch shrank back, his ears flattening in fear.
The two secretaries blinked and laughed so hard they could barely stand straight.
“So he’s afraid of his wife, hahahaha!”
They hadn’t finished laughing when they noticed the slight change in the man’s expression across from them. They immediately fell silent.
After a moment of intense mental scrambling, one of them spoke up. “Our Lanlan is protecting the chairman; she cares about him, she knows how hard he works.”
The other, catching the direction, added, “Yes, and Lord Hei is a good knight too, he’s trying very hard to protect Princess Lanlan! He deserves encouragement.”
Princess Lanlan? A knight?
Were they treating this like some kind of fairytale?
After that, the black cat stopped causing trouble. He obediently followed Qilan as her bodyguard. Qilan ate meat, and he ate cat food. When Liang Jianshi occasionally gave him a piece of beef, he ignored it.
Silly boy, he only liked cat food.
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
One day, Liang Jianshi held Qilan as he played the piano.
The same piano, the one worth millions, that had unjustly gotten Qilan fired.
He played smoothly, the melody deep and beautiful, with a rippling gentleness hidden in the notes.
Gradually, Qilan grew accustomed to listening to him play every night. She slept on Liang Jianshi’s lap, while the black cat lay at his feet. One human, one cat, and half, life was quite pleasant.
Why a half? Probably because the black cat wasn’t a whole cat anymore.
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
On the night of the first snowfall, Qilan, in her human form, ran into Liang Jianshi when she entered the house.
Usually, whenever she came to the house at night, Liang Jianshi wasn’t there. Today, it was different.
He sat at the piano, studying sheet music.
Noticing her arrival, Liang Jianshi didn’t look up.
“Reba, would you like to try playing the piano?”
Qilan’s heart tightened. She looked at the piano, a complex feeling welling up inside her.
Wasn’t Liang Jianshi the type who didn’t let anyone touch his piano? Yet now he was inviting her to play.
She should refuse, but deep down, she yearned to.
“Really… may I?”
Liang Jianshi furrowed his brows as he carefully marked and corrected the sheet music with a pen. His broad shoulders filled out his tailored suit, elegant and noble like a painting.
“You can start with something simple. Come here and press this key.”
Liang Jianshi’s slender fingertip struck a clear note, “do”.
Her heart pounding, Qilan moved closer and carefully sat down beside him. Following his instruction, she raised her hand and pressed the key.
A crisp “do” echoed softly through the room.
Perhaps because she was too clumsy, or because she couldn’t help feeling nervous around the expensive piano, eventually, he played while she listened.
Time seemed to fade away with the music. Outside, the wind and snow raged, but inside, the atmosphere was nothing but romantic.
Listening to the music, Qilan felt sleep creeping up on her instinctively. It seemed she had forgotten that she was human now, not a cat.
She let her head rest against Liang Jianshi’s shoulder…