Tang Miao ran until all four legs were trembling.
At 4:30 in the morning, the streetlights stretched her shadow into a long, thin line.
She didn’t dare take the main roads. She hugged the base of the walls, darting through alleys.
A cat’s body had one advantage—gaps a human couldn’t squeeze through, she could slip past by shrinking herself.
The city inspectors wouldn’t come this fast.
But she didn’t dare gamble.
In her past life delivering food, she’d dealt with city inspectors countless times.
Her e-bike had been ticketed for illegal parking, and she’d watched vendors’ entire carts get hauled away for occupying the sidewalk.
She also knew exactly how the inspectors treated stray animals.
They’d catch them, send them to the shelter, and if they were lucky, they’d get adopted.
If they weren’t lucky…
She didn’t want to know what “not lucky” meant.
Tang Miao ran north along the alley.
Her destination hadn’t changed.
The vegetable market.
Xinmin Vegetable Market on the north road of the university district opened at 5:30 every morning, with vendors starting to set up their stalls around 4:00.
The vegetable market was a complex space—dense stalls, plenty of blind spots.
Under the shelves, behind the foam boxes, in the gaps between the freezer units—everywhere was a place to hide.
Even if the inspectors came into the market, catching a cat wouldn’t be easy. Too many people, too much clutter.
But her stamina wouldn’t last much longer.
The energy from one steamed bun was being burned through at lightning speed by this kitten body.
The cold accelerated her metabolism. Her four legs grew weaker with every step, her paws slipping on the icy ground.
How much farther?
Tang Miao stopped, pricking up her ears to get her bearings.
That road on the right—she recognized it. University City West Road, the barbecue street.
Everything was shuttered now, a row of metal roll-down doors pulled tight.
Cross that street, head north, take one more turn, and she’d reach the market.
Just three hundred meters.
In her past life, that was a few seconds of twisting the throttle on her e-bike. For this kitten body, nearly frozen solid, it was a marathon of despair.
She gritted her teeth and kept going.
When she couldn’t run, she walked step by step.
When she couldn’t walk, she crawled forward.
Her paws touched the ground, the pads nearly numb from the cold.
Her tail dragged low, her ears flattened back against the wind.
Her body was instinctively conserving heat, shrinking into the smallest possible form.
But against a northern winter night at minus twenty degrees, these feline instincts could only do so much.
She turned the corner.
The vegetable market, at last.
Xinmin Vegetable Market was sealed off with thick corrugated steel panels. The main entrance hung with two layers of heavy black cotton curtains, soaked through with years of grease and grime.
Windproof and cold-resistant—not even a wisp of air could sneak through.
For a human, pushing through those curtains took some effort. For a little kitten, they were an insurmountable mountain.
A dim yellow light bled through the edges of the curtain, and faint sounds came from within.
A few early vendors were already busy at work.
Tang Miao crouched in the blind spot on the steps outside, her four legs shivering uncontrollably.
“Coming through! Coming through! Cabbage coming in!”
A rough voice bellowed from the alley entrance.
A fully loaded electric tricycle rumbled up, puttering and sputtering.
The man driving it, wrapped in a military-style overcoat, honked his horn and shouted for someone to open the door.
Hearing him, someone inside yanked the heavy cotton curtain aside.
As the curtain opened, a wave of warm air slammed into her—a mix of coal smoke, raw pork, and the fermented stench of rotting cabbage.
To Tang Miao, on the verge of freezing to death, it was heaven.
She spotted the narrow gap between the tricycle’s rear wheel and the doorframe, flattened herself against the ground, and slipped through in a flash.
The curtain dropped heavily behind her, sealing off the frozen world outside.
The temperature inside was forcibly pulled up to around freezing.
Tang Miao tumbled along the base of the wall and squeezed into a gap between a pile of battered foam boxes. Her four stiff, brittle legs finally gave out, splaying flat.
She buried her icy pink nose into her paw pads and let out a long breath of white air.
Alive. She was alive.
A few early vendors were unloading goods. Someone had lit a small radiant heater, its orange-red glow spreading a patch of warmth across the concrete floor.
Wait… orange-red?
She’d heard that cats could only see blue, green, yellow, and gray.
How could she tell orange-red apart?
Throughout this whole journey, her vision had been sharper at night, but other than that, it wasn’t much different from when she’d been human.
Never mind that. Right now, she needed to find a place that was:
Safe, warm, and had a food source.
Years of food delivery experience gave Tang Miao a thorough mental map of the market’s layout.
The entrance was the vegetable section. Farther in was the meat section. The farthest wall was the seafood section.
The seafood section was always the wettest, the fishiest, and the busiest part of any market.
Because they needed water, the seafood vendors would boil hot water in winter to keep the fish tanks from freezing.
Hot water meant warmth.
Fish meant food.
Tang Miao moved along the shadows at the base of the stalls, trying not to draw attention.
A cat’s body was naturally suited to this environment.
Low, small, quiet—and in the dim light, her orange fur was surprisingly inconspicuous.
She reached the seafood section.
Three fish stalls sat side by side. The one against the wall was the largest.
The vendor was a woman in her fifties, dumping a basket of live crucian carp into a water tank.
Beside the tank was an iron stove with a kettle on top, steam curling lazily into the air.
Beneath the stove was a gap—just big enough for a cat to crouch in.
Tang Miao stared at that gap for a good long while, then picked her moment and slipped around to the back of the fish stall.
This was the stall’s “backstage.”
Stacked foam boxes, an oxygen pump, a few knives crusted with fish scales, and a thin layer of water on the floor.
Between the foam boxes and the wall, there was a gap about twenty centimeters wide.
She squeezed inside.
The gap was narrow, but the iron stove was just above her head, its heat seeping down through the metal base.
Not exactly warm, but at least it wasn’t cold.
Tang Miao curled herself into a ball and finally stopped to catch her breath.
Safe, at least for now.
She closed her eyes and rested for about twenty minutes.
She didn’t really fall asleep.
A cat’s wariness wouldn’t allow her to fully sleep in an unfamiliar place, but her body got a brief recovery.
When she opened her eyes again, the market had come alive.
Dawn had broken.
All the stall owners had arrived, and the first wave of early-morning customers was streaming in.
Footsteps, hawking cries, the thud of cleavers on meat, the clang of scale weights hitting the pan—all of it flooded in.
Tang Miao lay flat in the gap, watching the fish stall lady work.
The lady was quick at cleaning fish.
A crucian carp scooped from the tank, a whack with the back of the knife, scales scraped, belly slit, guts removed—the whole sequence took under a minute.
The guts and scales were swept to the edge of the cutting board, then pushed into a plastic bucket at the end.
But… there were always ones that slipped through the net.
Literally.
Fish heads!
When the lady processed fish for customers, whether the head stayed or went depended on what the customer asked for.
Some wanted the head, some didn’t.
The unwanted heads were tossed into a small plastic basket kept on the lowest shelf of the cutting board.
Tang Miao counted—half an hour into the market, there were already four fish heads in the basket.
She was waiting for her chance.
And it came!
A man bought three fish and asked for all the heads removed.
The lady was busy cleaning fish and taking money, and she turned around to grab a plastic bag, her back to the cutting board.
Tang Miao shot out of the gap, moving so fast she surprised even herself.
Her hind legs pushed off, and her whole body flew like an arrow toward the bottom shelf of the cutting board.
Her claws hooked onto the edge of the plastic basket, her head poked in, and she grabbed a crucian carp head.
The head was heavier than she’d expected. The cold fish skin pressed against her mouth, and the stench hit her so hard she squinted.
She bit down hard and dragged the head back toward the gap.
“Hey!”
The lady turned around just in time to see a small orange figure dart into the crack behind the foam boxes.
Tang Miao’s whole body tensed.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Fish head in her mouth, she crouched in the gap, her heart pounding so fast it felt like it would leap out of her throat.
Her cat instincts kicked in—every hair on her body stood on end, her tail puffing up like a bottle brush.
The lady set down her scale-covered cleaver and crouched, her rough face suddenly blocking out all the light from the gap.