A cat tried to curl itself into a ball, its rear facing outward, its glossy black tail tucked between its legs, making it look like a small, pitch-black lump of coal.
It was a little nervous.
In the cramped, old elevator, a tired woman who had just gotten off work looked at the white-haired elderly woman in surprise. “Your cat? But this is my cat!”
Actually, the story had begun that morning.
As a healthy and strong cat, it had always maintained the good habit of patrolling its territory.
“Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz.”
When the fitness watch vibrated for the sixth time, Xiaomi dutifully crawled out of the warm bed and tilted its head at the human who was still lazing around.
The human turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.
Humans were not disciplined.
If she was late, the fragile human would cry. Xiaomi still remembered the last time she had lost her perfect-attendance bonus and came home crying while hugging it for a long time.
So when the alarm rang again, the cat raised a front paw without hesitation, carefully retracting its sharp claws before giving the human a smack on the nose.
“Ahhh, I’m going to be late!”
The human screamed and scrambled out of bed. After a flurry of clattering noises, she grabbed her bag and ran out the door. Before leaving, she forcibly pinned the cat onto the bed, buried her face in its soft belly, and took several deep breaths while making strange “Hehe, hehe” noises.
“Xiaomi, be good and stay home, okay?”
“Meow.” Xiaomi answered, raising its head and touching her face with its nose.
Among cats, this was a friendly way of greeting.
But from what it had observed, humans seemed to regard it as something more affectionate.
The young woman immediately covered her face happily. “Xiaomi loves me, hehe. Xiaomi loves me! Xiaomi, when Mommy comes home, I’ll give you a cat treat tube~”
She skipped away.
As soon as it heard the door close, Xiaomi, which had been pretending to sleep under the blanket, immediately got up. With a light leap, it jumped onto the windowsill and skillfully pushed open the window screen with its paw.
The urban village was filled with “hand-holding buildings.” As the name suggested, if you stood by the window and reached out your hand, you could hold hands with the neighbors in the building opposite.
Thin wisps of white steam rose through the cramped alleyways. One young soul after another emerged from the buildings and hurried through the narrow, damp little street, like an umbilical cord, toward the brightly lit and bustling city in the distance.
Xiaomi sat on the windowsill and picked out its roommate’s figure from the crowd.
It leaped between the hand-holding buildings. Every air-conditioning bracket, protruding windowsill, and metal sign was a place for the cat to land.
In this dense steel jungle, it was upstairs while its roommate was downstairs.
There.
It expertly stopped and sat on a blazing-red awning. From beneath the awning came its roommate’s voice.
“Two shaomai and a cup of soy milk, please.”
Five yuan. Xiaomi answered silently in its heart.
“Sure, five yuan!”
After buying breakfast, its roommate would ride away on a strange beast with two wheels. Xiaomi remained on the awning outside the breakfast shop, watching her back disappear into the distance.
This escort mission had also been successfully completed.
It sat proudly, its tail swaying lightly.
Protecting humans was a principle the cat had established for itself. The food humans brought home was the protection fee they paid it.
It firmly believed this.
But why did it suddenly feel a little guilty?
The elevator in the old apartment building was slow and shaky. The cat curled up in a corner, trying to turn itself into a giant black rat.
“Xiaomi?” the woman called hesitantly. “Is that you? How did you get out?”
The elderly woman smiled and said slowly but firmly, “Young lady, you’ve mistaken it. This is my cat. His name is Fuwa. Look, he just came back from grocery shopping with me.”
Actually, something like this should have been difficult to happen.
Every day after escorting its roommate, Xiaomi would return home. It would leap through the steel jungle and jump onto a half-closed window.
“Meow.”
It called once from outside, then shoved its head through the gap in the window and squeezed inside like a liquid. It jumped down by the kitchen door.
The rich aroma of fish immediately filled its nose.
“Fuwa.” Grandma poured milky-white fish soup into its little bowl and looked at it kindly. “Back after running wild all night? Did you catch any mice?”
“Meow!” The cat stood up and pawed at her leg, so anxious it could almost speak human language.
“No, it’s too hot. You have to wait until it cools down before you can eat.”
“Meowww QVQ.”
Grandpa came out of the study holding a toy with a brightly colored feather attached to it, immediately capturing the cat’s attention. “Fuwa, you’re back so early today. Come, come, watch the little bird fly—”
After finishing its fish soup, Xiaomi would stay by Grandma and Grandpa’s side, keeping them company through their long and boring day.
The elderly couple had both been university professors in the past, and their home was spotless. Grandma liked to sit in the living room with the opera channel playing, listening to traditional opera, while Grandpa would stay in his study practicing calligraphy.
Xiaomi chased the brush across the rice paper, occasionally leaving little plum-blossom-shaped paw prints beside the freshly written characters. Its sharp claws sometimes even tore through the thin rice paper.
“Who says my Fuwa can’t write? My Fuwa writes beautifully! I’m going to have this piece framed. Professor Xue, come and look at Fuwa’s calligraphy.”
Grandma Xue kept her eyes closed, completely absorbed in the opera, and ignored him.
When the opera program ended, Grandma Xue would get up to buy groceries. Xiaomi would accompany her downstairs to the fresh market to buy vegetables, as well as chicken and fish for itself.
After Grandma finished making dinner, Xiaomi would eat its meal and then leap out the window.
The elderly couple followed the rough-and-ready cat-raising methods of the older generation, letting it roam freely outside. They thought the cat simply went out to play wildly for the night. But if they opened the window and leaned out, they would see the black cat swiftly crossing the long, narrow street, leaping between steel and iron. Behind it, several stray cats followed closely, running as fast as the wind.
Yes, the cat had to bring its underlings home so they could finish the cat food in their bowls.
That way, the humans would never discover that it had secretly been collecting protection fees from two households.
But today, Grandma had been talking about visiting an old friend. After buying groceries, she wandered through the alleyways and eventually arrived at an old apartment building.
And so, the humans from its two territories met.
Both of them thought it was their own cat.
The cat lowered its head even further.
“Your cat? But… it looks exactly like my Xiaomi.”
“It’s a black cat.” Grandma Xue adjusted her glasses. Her neatly cut, shoulder-length white hair gleamed under the elevator light, and she gave a gentle, scholarly smile. “They all look rather similar. Maybe they’re siblings from the same litter. I’ll call it over so you can take a look. Fuwa, why aren’t you turning around?”
“Can I feed it?” The woman smiled shyly. “These are salmon-flavored cat treat tubes. They’re Xiaomi’s favorite.”
“Of course.”
Smelling the familiar aroma, Xiaomi raised its head, its tail swaying cheerfully, and turned around.
The cat’s pupils narrowed into slits, vertical and elongated within its eerie green eyes.
A wash of red light fell over them, dyeing Grandma’s snow-white hair crimson.
Between the narrow gap of the elevator’s two doors, another blood-red eye appeared, staring at them greedily and maliciously.
Xiaomi did not know when it had appeared, but instinctively sensed danger. The fur on its tail puffed up like a fluffy feather duster. It instantly sprang to the elevator doors, emitting a low, threatening growl as it fearlessly stared back at the eye.
The elevator slowly moved upward.
As the elevator traveled, the eye in the gap was stretched longer and longer. The bloodshot eye socket looked like a rubber band being forcibly pulled taut, with one eyeball after another crammed inside.
When it was stretched to its limit—
With a soft “pop,” it disappeared.
The cat had repelled another intruder and protected its territory once again, but the two people in the elevator were completely unaware of it.
“Ah…” The young woman looked a little frightened and slipped the cat treat back into her pocket. “Does it not like strangers? It seems like it’s stressed out.”
Afraid of frightening the little cat, she moved farther into the corner.
Xiaomi guarded the elevator door and lowered its head to lick its paw. Ever since it had once killed a snake and placed it on its roommate’s pillow, frightening her into tears, it had learned that humans were creatures that were extremely insensitive to danger yet incredibly fragile.
It had defeated intruders countless times, but its roommate remained completely unaware. Whenever it showed off its achievements to her, she would scream.
It was used to it by now.
After failing to feed the cat a treat, the young woman felt a little awkward. She took out her phone and tapped at it, pretending to be busy.
“Did you receive the package I sent you?”
A chat window popped up on the black screen.
A sweet smile appeared on her face. “I’m holding it right now. I’m getting ready to go home and open it.”
“[Happy] [Happy]”
The elevator doors slowly opened. The woman lowered her head to look at her phone and quickly walked out of the elevator. She never looked at the cat again, as if the square screen in her hand possessed some kind of magic that had captured her entire soul.
The cat followed behind her and silently slipped out of the elevator.
“Have fun. Be careful and stay safe. Watch out for the things in the dark.”
The woman turned around at the sound of the voice. The light from her phone made her face look deathly pale, and a cold gleam reflected in her eyes.
“Were you talking to me?”
“I was reminding my Fuwa.”
“Oh.”
The apartment building had a total of thirty-six units. Along both sides of the long corridor stood tall black doors, upright like gravestones.
Only one section of the fluorescent lighting still worked. Its bleak, cold light filtered through layers of insect carcasses and illuminated the moldy, bulging walls.
Taking advantage of the open door, Xiaomi turned into a blur and darted inside. Its completely black fur served as perfect camouflage, allowing it to blend seamlessly into the darkness of the room. It slipped into the cat bed by the base of the wall. When its roommate opened the door, it poked its head out of the cat bed and gave a “meow,” pretending that it had just woken up after sleeping all day.
It even sharpened its claws and stretched lazily before strolling over to greet her.
“Meow.”
Its roommate placed the package on the table and continued chatting with someone else with her head lowered, the corners of her lips raised in a lovestruck smile.
Xiaomi walked over, rubbed against her calf, and reminded her.
“Meow~”
It could smell the cat treats!
They smelled so good—salmon-flavored cat treats.
Today’s protection fee was due.
But its roommate continued playing with the thing called a phone, tapping away at it with her fingers and completely ignoring the cat.
Cats did not like phones. Whenever its roommate slept, it had beaten up her phone more than once. It resentfully decided that tonight it would push the phone under the bed and smash it to pieces!
“Meow!” it reminded her loudly.
Protection fee! Cat treats!
The roommate suddenly raised her head.
“Meow.” Xiaomi looked at her expectantly.
But she turned her face toward the other side, staring at the package on the table. In a wooden voice, she said, “Good children have to accept gifts.”
“Good children have to accept gifts.”
As she repeated the sentence, she pulled a utility knife from the drawer.
“Meow!” Xiaomi’s tail exploded into a puff of fur. It jumped onto a two-meter-high metal bookshelf and loudly protested at its roommate.
The roommate turned around, lowered her head, and faced the package on the table.
The package was a palm-sized cardboard box, sealed in the middle with tape. It had probably been handled roughly; the entire box was crooked and lopsided, as though it might fall apart at any moment.
“Good children have to accept gifts.”
She raised the knife and was about to stab it into the box when she suddenly heard a loud “bang” behind her.
She turned around.
A crystal ball on the bookshelf had fallen and shattered into pieces.
The black cat calmly looked at her, its tail swaying. It raised one paw and politely pushed another crystal ball onto the floor.