The Homeless Xiao Hei Cat
By the time Ji Xiao carried that kid downstairs on his shoulder, he was so exhausted he was almost out of breath, and his legs were starting to feel unsteady. The kid looked pretty skinny, but once he was actually slung over someone, he was surprisingly heavy.
When Ji Xiao dumped him onto the ambulance stretcher, he almost followed him in himself.
Over there, Wu Zhijun was shouting himself hoarse. The water pressure from the fire hoses was too weak, and with the people stranded on the rooftop, some of them were too scared to step onto the aerial ladder’s basket platform during the rescue. Anxiety rang through his voice.
Ji Xiao patted the kid on the shoulder. “Wait here. A doctor will check you over in a minute.”
Ji Xiao ran beneath the aerial ladder. The flames had already curled in through the fifteenth-floor windows. There was no way down by the stairwell anymore, but the ladder could not reach high enough.
The people on the rooftop had to slide down a little under the firefighters’ protection, then jump onto the platform. A few had already made the jump, but several others absolutely refused to move, clinging to the firefighters and refusing to let go, leaving everyone stuck in an impossible position.
“Get this group down first!” Wu Zhijun shouted into the radio.
The aerial ladder slowly descended with seven or eight people on it. Wu Zhijun turned and waved at Ji Xiao, and Ji Xiao immediately climbed aboard. After everyone got off, the ladder lifted him back up again.
Ji Xiao removed a lifeline, fastened it securely around himself, and flung the other end upward. The colleague above tied the rope to the rooftop guardrail. Ji Xiao gave it a tug, and once he was sure there was no problem, he jumped out of the platform, kicked twice against the wall, and climbed onto the rooftop.
“Help, help…” The moment he got up there, a woman in her thirties threw herself at him and grabbed hold of him. She was shaking all over, so frightened she could barely stand steady.
“Aren’t we rescuing you right now?” The woman had her arms around his waist so tightly she was pushing him right up against the railing, but Ji Xiao had no time to say more. He took the safety rope from his colleague and started winding it around her. “Work with me here, jiejie. Don’t be scared.”
“No, no, no, what are you doing? No, no, this won’t do.” The woman realized Ji Xiao was tying the two of them together and immediately panicked. Stretching herself sideways, she reached toward another firefighter nearby, who was in the middle of struggling with an elderly woman. “Help, save me, save me, ah, ah, ah!”
Ji Xiao’s colleague was already drenched in sweat. Seeing this, he did not know whether to laugh or cry, so he could only pretend he had heard nothing.
After securing the rope firmly, Ji Xiao picked the woman up and stepped onto the railing with her in his arms. She let out a scream and instantly locked her arms around his neck. His head swam for a moment, and he pulled her arms away. “Jiejie, you can stay here and wait for the fire to reach you, or you can come over with me. Your choice. If you don’t want to, I’ll take someone else down first.”
“…I want to go down.” The woman stared at Ji Xiao’s face for a long while before finally managing to say a sentence without screaming.
“Hold somewhere else, don’t strangle my neck.” Ji Xiao smiled and tried to reassure her. “It’s fine. It’s less than a meter. If this were flat ground, you’d be able to step across without thinking. Don’t look down.”
Holding the woman, Ji Xiao slowly slid down. He had rushed up in such a hurry that he had not put on gloves, and the rope burned painfully against his hands. Fortunately, the distance was very short. After jumping onto the platform, he looked down at his hands. The skin had been rubbed raw.
“Wait here a bit. Do you know anyone up there?” Ji Xiao untied the rope.
“Yes.” The woman nodded, still badly shaken.
“Tell them not to panic. If they cooperate with us, they can get down faster. The fire has already reached this far, you saw that yourself. The fire hose pressure isn’t strong enough, the water can’t reach the fifteenth floor. If this drags on any longer, it’ll be very dangerous.” After his colleague brought another person down, Ji Xiao climbed back up along the rope again.
There were still three or four people left above, and they had to be brought down together. The aerial ladder took ten minutes for one full trip up and down, they could not afford the delay.
The woman behind him gradually calmed down. Sitting on the platform, she began shouting upward, “It’s okay, I already made it over. I barely felt anything. Hurry up, the fire’s coming up…”
After they finally got everyone down from the rooftop, Ji Xiao climbed onto the fire engine and sat down to rest, drenched in rank sweat. His whole body was limp with exhaustion. His legs and arms, after straining so hard just now, were all trembling faintly and aching with soreness.
Over there, the firefighting team had already put out the open flames below the thirteenth floor, and everyone had gone inside the building now. Lin Zi climbed onto the truck too and undid the fastenings on his protective gear. Both of them were soaked all over, the T-shirts underneath completely drenched, their faces streaked with lines of soot.
“Damn, that nearly killed me…” Lin Zi was exhausted too. He lifted his shirt and wiped his face at random a couple of times. “Your hand’s torn up. Wrap it.”
Ji Xiao lowered his head and looked at his hand. Earlier, his attention had not been on it, so he had not felt much, but only now did he notice that a whole layer of skin had been stripped off his hand. Several cuts were still seeping blood. He frowned. “Shit, I’m disfigured.”
“Truly a master. Your face grew on your hand.” Lin Zi gave him a thumbs-up.
Someone leaned in by the truck door. Ji Xiao glanced over. It was a TV station reporter, holding out a microphone and poking his head into the truck. Ji Xiao stood up, said to Lin Zi, “I’m going to get my clothes,” then shoved past the reporter and jumped off the truck. Interviews with reporters were a pain, especially when the fire was not even fully out yet. Who had time to deal with them?
He walked over to the ambulance from earlier. He might have to go back into the fire scene in a bit, so he needed to get his protective gear back, and while he was at it, find some gauze to wrap his hand. But when he looked inside the ambulance, he found that the kid was already gone, and his protective gear had been neatly folded and placed on the seat.
Ji Xiao picked up the clothes and put them on while scanning the surroundings. There were quite a few people around, but he did not see that kid anywhere.
March had already turned warmer, but at a little past five in the morning, it was still pretty cold. That kid had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs, where could he have gone?
He stopped a nurse-looking young woman, asked her for some bandages, and also asked, “Where did the boy I brought over earlier go?”
“I didn’t see anyone,” the young woman said, glancing at his hand. “You can’t leave it like that. The cuts are too deep, they need disinfecting!”
“I’ll deal with it after this…” Ji Xiao wrapped the bandage around his hand a couple of times at random, turned around, and ran off. Maybe that kid had left with his family.
By the time he got back from the fire scene to the dormitory, it was already after seven in the morning. Ji Xiao was so tired he did not even want to shower, but he was filthy enough to outrage both gods and men.
Even he could smell the strange odor coming off himself, the smell of burning wood, the smell of things scorched, the smell of sweat, and for some reason, even the smell of pickled sour radish. So in the end he still grabbed a change of clothes and went into the shower room.
Lin Zi was already inside, stripped completely naked. When he saw Ji Xiao come in, he let out a couple of grunts by way of greeting. Then he looked at Ji Xiao’s hand and added, “Find time to make a trip to the hospital for that disfigured hand of yours.”
Ji Xiao lowered his head and looked at his hand. Blood had seeped through the haphazard bandaging. He stripped his clothes off carelessly, stepped beneath the showerhead, and braced one hand against the wall. He was too lazy to say a word.
After showering, Lin Zi did not come to Ji Xiao’s room again to mooch his bed, probably because he was so tired he forgot that he had just sprayed instant noodles all over his own bed.
Ji Xiao dropped onto his bed face-first, and in less than five minutes, he was asleep.
“So you’ve got nowhere to live again?” Su Gui sat cross-legged on the floor, watching Ding Wei rummage through his wardrobe for clothes.
“Mm.” Ding Wei sighed. “Why are all your clothes so childish?”
“You should be glad there’s anything to wear. If you don’t like it, go out naked and buy your own.” Su Gui rolled his eyes at him. “Honestly, you’re really something. Getting stuck in a sewer pipe was humiliating enough, but with a fire making such a huge commotion, you actually still slept through it? If word gets out, you’ll have disgraced the entire race of nine-tailed cats…”
“Shut up.” Ding Wei turned his head, pointed a finger at him, and narrowed his eyes.
Su Gui shut his mouth. To be safe, he even edged a little farther back. Ding Wei had a bad temper, and when he got physical he had no sense of restraint. Besides, Ding Wei was stronger than he was. In human form, Su Gui was no match for him.
Ding Wei casually picked out a set of clothes and put them on, then went to Su Gui’s refrigerator and found something to eat. Only after he had eaten his fill and felt comfortable did he sit down cross-legged across from Su Gui and speak in a somewhat gloomy tone. “I’m back to seven tails again.”
“No, way…” Su Gui dragged out each word. Ding Wei’s new tail had only grown back not long ago, and now it was gone again this quickly. “You ran into someone you’re fated with again?”
“Mm.”
Su Gui sighed and patted him on the shoulder. “I won’t comfort you. I’ve been comforting you for hundreds of years, I can’t think of any new words anymore. Get some sleep. I’m going out.”
Ding Wei did not ask why someone like Su Gui, who slept by day and moved by night, was going out in broad daylight. It was probably because of him. Although he and Su Gui had known each other a long time, they were not the same kind.
In fact, by nature, they were opponents. If the two of them stayed in one room together, then in less than an hour, they would definitely end up fighting.
After Su Gui left, Ding Wei wandered around the room for a bit. First he had to make a trip back to the apartment he had rented. He did not know whether the fire had ultimately reached the fifteenth floor, and he had not brought a single one of his belongings out.
Actually, if that firefighter had not just picked him up and carried him away, he would have been perfectly able to go back and pack up some of his things. At the very least… Ding Wei narrowed his eyes at the mirror, looking at his pupils, which had shrunk into vertical slits under the direct sunlight. At the very least, he should have brought his contact lenses with him.
He picked up a pair of sunglasses from Su Gui’s desk and put them on. Then, with vigorous, scrawling strokes, he left a few words for Su Gui in the message notebook on top of the refrigerator: The sunglasses are nice. I’ll return them tomorrow. Then he went out too.
When he returned to Yajuyuan, Ding Wei got a clear look at the aftermath of yesterday’s fire.
From the tenth floor upward, the entire building was blackened. On the lower floors, several windows had burned away completely, leaving behind gaping holes, and every now and then a wisp or two of black smoke still drifted out.
The elevators were not allowed to be used, so Ding Wei made his way upstairs by the stairwell. There were a lot of people on the stairs. Quite a few of the residents affected by the fire were moving their things out.
Whenever there was no one around, Ding Wei would grab the stair railing and spring upward step by step, which saved quite a bit of effort. The moment he heard people nearby, he would stop and switch back to walking.
The fifteenth floor had not been burned much, it was just that the walls had been smoked black, like a kitchen stove.
There was someone inside the room he rented. He pushed open the door that had been broken in yesterday and saw his landlord and landlady standing in the living room, both looking depressed. The moment she saw him, the landlady immediately hurried over. “Ding Wei, are you okay after yesterday?”
“I’m fine.” Because he was wearing sunglasses, Ding Wei felt the room was extremely dark. But he did not dare take them off in front of his landlords, so he could only slowly head toward the bathroom, intending to put his contact lenses in first.
“It’s good that you’re okay. I only found out this morning and rushed right over. When I saw you weren’t here, I was scared to death,” the landlady said. She was very talkative, but her heart was not bad. “Property management just notified us, they said the upper floors can’t be lived in for the time being, they have to be repaired first. So, well…”
“I’ll move out.” Ding Wei went into the bathroom and saw that his contact lenses were still sitting by the sink. He quickly took off the sunglasses, washed his hands, and put the lenses in.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Good. His eyes had turned black again.
The landlord returned his rent deposit, and Ding Wei left carrying a bag on his back.
He had very few things, just a few changes of clothes. Actually, if the landlady had not kept fussing over him and insistently helping him pack, he would have been fine not taking any clothes at all.
As for clothes, having one set was enough. If he truly had none, at worst he could just stay in cat form all the time.
It was just that… now that he had so suddenly lost his place to stay, where exactly was he supposed to go?
As he stood at the roadside in a daze, the phone stuffed inside his bag rang. Ding Wei rarely used a cell phone. He hated modern things, and there were basically not many people who could contact him, so the phone rang for quite a while before he finally realized it.
“Hello.” Ding Wei looked at the unfamiliar number on the screen, unable to think who it might be.
“Little kitty, where are you?” A man’s voice came through from the other end, smiling as he spoke.
Ding Wei recognized Lu Kuan’s voice at once. He frowned. “What’s it to you?”
Lu Kuan was a maoke.
The term maoke sounded pretty strange, but actually it simply referred to ordinary humans who, generation after generation, provided protection and assistance to nine-tailed cats, allowing them to live safely in human society while cultivating. But that protection and assistance were not always given for free. Sometimes there were conditions attached.
Ding Wei hated maoke, especially Lu Kuan.
Although he was currently working at the bar Lu Kuan owned, he had never once tried to hide his dislike in front of him. But Lu Kuan did not seem to care. “There was a fire at Yajuyuan, little kitty. You’ve got nowhere to stay now, right?”
“Mm. They’re not letting people live there anymore.” Ding Wei walked slowly forward along the roadside.
“Come over.” Lu Kuan chuckled. “I’ve found a place for you to stay.”
“No need.” Ding Wei refused very decisively.
“Stop being stubborn. The place I found for you is right by the back gate of Central Garden. It’ll be close for you to go sun yourself,” Lu Kuan said lazily. “And close for moonbathing too. Come get the key before four o’clock. I’ve got something to do at four.”
Ji Xiao had the morning off. Originally, he could have slept until noon before getting up, but a little after ten, his phone started singing obnoxiously with absolutely no sense of timing.
The caller ID showed it was from home. He had not wanted to answer, but he could not withstand the bombardment of a call every ten minutes, so in utter helplessness he finally picked up. Still buried in his pillow, he did not care whether it was his father or his mother on the other end. “Please spare me, I only got back from the fire scene at seven this morning…”
“What’s with all this whining about being tired? Nobody forced a big healthy young man like you to join the firefighting unit in the first place,” his mother’s voice came through, full of disdain. “Take the afternoon off and go pick someone up at the airport.”
Ji Xiao jerked his head up from the pillow at once. He did not bother correcting the fact that his mother had once again called the fire brigade the firefighting unit. “Pick someone up? Shen Yu’s back?”