Ji Xiao’s Hundred Thousand Whys
By the time Ji Xiao got back to the dorm, it was almost time for dinner. Even though he had skipped lunch, he no longer felt hungry.
“Xiao Hua!” Lin Zi followed behind him, and the moment he turned into the corridor, he saw that there was now a little tabby cat inside the cardboard box Ji Xiao had left in the corner yesterday. “I’m not seeing things, right? It really is Xiao Hua!”
“That’s pretty strange. There’s still some canned cat food left, take it and feed her.” Ji Xiao answered flatly, then went back to his own room and sat down on the chair in a daze.
He had an indescribable sense of fear toward warehouses. Today, when he saw the warehouse wrapped in flames and thick smoke, that feeling had been especially intense. Several times while going inside, he had wanted to turn around and run.
Warehouse. Smoke. Fire.
Those things had appeared over and over in his dreams for the past few years, tormenting him again and again… Every time he jolted awake from a nightmare in the middle of the night, he would be covered in cold sweat, exhausted as if he had just run several kilometers.
Ji Xiao closed his eyes.
Yuanhang, I’m sorry.
“You’re not showering? You stink.” After feeding the cat, Lin Zi pushed the door open and came in, fanning the air under his nose.
“What you’re smelling is your own stink.” Ji Xiao smiled, got to his feet, and took out a change of clothes.
“I can tell something’s off with you today.” Lin Zi patted him. “Don’t be that impulsive again. There wasn’t anyone in the warehouse. Even if that liquefied gas cylinder blew up, there wouldn’t have been any casualties. Why the hell did you charge in and carry it out without a second thought? We hadn’t even figured out the state the cylinder was in yet. What if it had exploded?”
“Mm.” Ji Xiao walked out the door. The moment he came out of the fire scene, Wu Zhijun had already chewed him out once, saying he was showing off and acting tough. He glanced at the cat in the box and noticed that there was actually a splint fixed to its back leg. He turned and looked at Lin Zi. “You did that?”
“No. It was already like that when it got back. Do you think that kid hurt the cat…”
“Probably not.” Ji Xiao bent down and poked the cat’s leg with a finger. “And that’s not the main point. Shouldn’t the main point be, why was the cat with him?”
“And he even knew it was a cat from our place?” Lin Zi thought about it for a long time. “Also, how did he get in…”
“Shower first. We’ll ask the duty room later.” Ji Xiao looked at the cat. The cat had only been gone for one night, but its appetite had improved quite a bit. With the two of them standing around it, it kept its head lowered and ate without stopping. Could it be that it had already been hurt yesterday, and the pain had made it unable to eat?
Lu Kuan had somehow managed to complete Ding Wei’s transfer procedures. It was to a private high school in the city, supposedly one with strict discipline and a very high college admission rate. Ding Wei had absolutely no interest in it. He had never figured out what going to this school had to do with growing a tail back. The thought of spending every day surrounded by a bunch of human kids was enough to make him so irritated he wanted to shed fur.
“I’ll pay your tuition. You just need to come help out at the shop on weekends.” Lu Kuan sat behind the desk, gently swiveling his chair back and forth. “Stop being so annoyed all the time. If Uncle tells you to go, then go.”
“Has he ever gone to school himself?” Ding Wei curled his lip.
“No idea. By the time I met him, he was already an uncle.” Lu Kuan smiled and waved at Ding Wei. “Go get ready. In a bit, head to school and register by yourself. Study hard and improve every day. Don’t embarrass yourself, little kitty.”
Ding Wei felt that Lu Kuan was a very capable person. He could take a perfectly normal conversation and, right at the end, turn it into something unbelievably infuriating. When it came to provoking people into getting mad, nobody was more accomplished than Lu Kuan.
Ding Wei had nothing to get ready. He did not even have a schoolbag. He could walk right out the door. The café had not opened yet, and the two girls were busy tidying up inside. When they saw him come out, they greeted him.
“Ding Wei, heading to school?”
“Mm.” Ding Wei pushed the door open and went out. He was not a hardworking person, but at this moment, he actually felt that cleaning the café was much more interesting than going to school.
The school was not nearby. He had checked, and it would take forty minutes by bus. He considered whether he should take the bus or just walk there. He rarely took the bus. There were always too many people on public transportation, so whenever he went anywhere, he preferred to run there himself. Of course, his range of activity was not very large. He was not a stray cat.
After walking a few steps along the road, Ding Wei heard someone honk behind him, so he moved a bit to the side. The honking continued, so he moved over again. Only after moving did he remember that he was walking on the sidewalk. Immediately annoyed, he turned his head.
On the road behind him, by the curb, someone was riding a motorcycle along beside him. Seeing him turn around, the man smiled and waved.
“Hi!”
“You looking for me?” Ding Wei stopped and looked at him. After running into this guy over and over again, he could not even be bothered to think much about it anymore. He did not even have the energy to sigh, What fate.
“Yeah. My name’s Ji Xiao. You should still remember me, right?” Ji Xiao let the motorcycle glide slowly to his side.
“Ding Wei.” Ding Wei lifted the corners of his mouth, which counted as a smile.
“You were the one standing outside our squad yesterday holding the cat, right?” Ji Xiao had not come to look for him first thing in the morning for no reason. He had asked the duty room, and no outsider had entered the squad compound yesterday. He was deeply suspicious of the idea that a cat with a broken leg could somehow recognize the way and climb back by itself to the third-floor dorm corridor.
“Yes.”
“Xiao Hua was the one you put back?”
Xiao Hua?
Ding Wei froze for a second. When he realized that was the little kitty’s name, he could not help but admire Ji Xiao for being able to say such a rustic name, rustic enough to belong in the deepest mountains, with such natural ease.
“Mm.” He nodded.
“How did you get into our squad compound?” Ji Xiao planted one leg on the ground, and the bike’s engine was already off. He felt that talking to this kid was a little exhausting. Other than “mm” and “yes,” he would not say a single extra word.
This time, Ding Wei did not even give him an “mm.”
That’s right, how had he gotten into the compound?
Why, by going around to the rear wall, jumping up, hooking into the cracks in the wall with his claws, and scrambling right up. For a cat, it was not difficult at all.
“And also, how did Xiao Hua end up with you? Is that little black cat yours? Can it steal other cats? Did you splint Xiao Hua’s leg? How did you know Xiao Hua was a cat from our squad?” Seeing that he was not saying anything, Ji Xiao simply spilled out all his questions in one breath. After saying them, even he was startled. There were actually this many suspicious points…
Ding Wei looked at him. His eyes were dark and bright, but he did not seem to have any intention of opening his mouth, as though he had been frightened by that string of questions. Ji Xiao also said nothing. Before Ding Wei answered, he no longer knew what he ought to say, so he could only stare back at him.
After the two of them had looked at each other for a while, Ji Xiao made a new discovery. He suddenly understood why, when he had seen Ding Wei at the café that day, he had felt that something was off. Those amber-colored eyes rose before him. He looked at Ding Wei’s eyes, hesitated a moment, then said, “When I carried you out that day… your eyes weren’t this color, were they? Weren’t they yellow?”
Ding Wei immediately twisted his head away. “Colored contacts.”
“Colored contacts? You wear colored contacts when you sleep, then take them out during the day?” Ji Xiao was pretty surprised. There were actually people this unusual. “You’ve really got personality… Aren’t you worried about damaging your eyes?”
Ding Wei had never met anyone with this many questions. Even when a fated person saw his true form, nobody had ever matched Ji Xiao’s drive, the kind of drive that could rival a whole One Hundred Thousand Whys.
“I… I’m going to be late for school.” There was no way Ding Wei could answer his questions, so he simply turned and walked off.
Behind him came the sound of the motorcycle starting up. Then he heard it move up beside him again, and Ji Xiao honked the horn.
“Didn’t you say you weren’t going to school?”
At that instant, Ding Wei really was reaching the limit of what he could stand. He spun around sharply and slapped one hand onto the motorcycle’s handlebar, his eyes wide and round.
“Do you know you’re really annoying?”
“…Yeah, I know.” The moment Ding Wei’s hand came down on the handlebar, Ji Xiao felt a very obvious resistance. You really could not tell by looking at him, this kid was pretty strong.
“Then shut up!” Ding Wei smacked the dashboard, turned, and stormed off. This person was annoying to death, seriously annoying to death!
Ji Xiao laughed. This was really interesting. The kid had actually gotten mad. He himself had a whole pile of questions and had not gotten a single direct answer yet, and even he was not in a hurry. He twisted the throttle and caught up with him.
“Ding Wei.”
“Go away!” Ding Wei stared at the road ahead and strode forward. He would not even spare Ji Xiao a sidelong glance.
“I won’t ask anymore.” Ji Xiao smiled. The motorcycle passed him, then stopped by the roadside. He pointed at the back seat. “Get on.”
“What for?” Ding Wei stopped.
“Aren’t you going to be late? I’ll take you. Get on.”
Ding Wei did not say anything, and he did not move either. He had never ridden a motorcycle before. Other than buses and the subway… and horse-drawn carriages, he had never ridden any other kind of vehicle.
He hesitated.
To tell the truth, when Ji Xiao told him to get on, he was pretty excited. Even though he did not like modern things, the speed of a motorcycle really interested him. No matter how fast he could run, he could not possibly be faster than this thing.
Unless he jumped off a building. That was also why he liked leaping straight down from the balcony in the middle of the night.
He liked the feeling of the wind blowing through all the fur on his body and making it stand up… even though he did not have fur right now.
“What are you thinking about?” Ji Xiao lifted a hand and waved it in front of his eyes. “Afraid I’ll kidnap you and sell you off? A little girl could still fetch a price. You wouldn’t sell for much.”
“Shut up.” Ding Wei shot him a glance. Gritting his teeth, he made up his mind and swung a leg over the motorcycle.
Ji Xiao started the bike, and it shot forward all at once. The sudden force of inertia made Ding Wei’s body jerk sharply backward. He hurriedly reached forward and grabbed at something, catching Ji Xiao’s clothes. He gave them a fierce yank, and only then did he manage to steady himself.
“Grab this.” Ji Xiao shifted forward a little and reached one hand behind him, pointing at the leather strap sticking out from under his butt. “You’re going to rip my clothes.”
“Oh.” Ding Wei looked at it, then reached out and grabbed it.
The early morning wind, carrying a trace of chill, swept past his ears. Ding Wei narrowed his eyes. This feeling was just too comfortable. He tipped his head back slightly. His hair fluttered in the wind, and it made him want to let out a few meows.
Before the café opened for business, Lu Kuan would usually go downstairs and take a look around. But today he did not go down. After Ding Wei left, he turned on the computer, and the system informed him that he had a new email.
He opened his mailbox. The sender was J. There was no content in the email. He frowned and clicked open the attachment.
Several photographs slowly unfolded before his eyes. The files were large, extremely clear, but the content made his stomach churn. He covered his mouth instinctively.
“Fuck.” Lu Kuan swiftly closed the pictures. After thinking for a moment, he deleted the email from the mailbox as well.
He had no idea who had taken those photos, or where they had been taken, but all of them showed more or less the same thing. He had seen plenty of dead cats, but for someone to send photos like that to his private email, it meant those dead cats were not ordinary cats.
They were nine-tailed cats, nine-tailed cats that had not yet fully taken shape, cats like Ding Wei, still in the middle of growing their tails back.
Lu Kuan stood by the window and finished a cigarette. Then he carefully wiped down all the flowers and plants on the windowsill before putting on his coat and heading downstairs.
“Boss, you’re going out?” The girl had already finished arranging the tables and chairs in the café and was busy behind the bar. When she saw him walking toward the door, she looked a little surprised. Lu Kuan rarely went out.
“Mm. I’ll be back in the afternoon or tonight. Thanks for your hard work.” Lu Kuan responded.
When Ji Xiao stopped the bike at the school gate, Ding Wei stayed sitting on it, stunned for quite a while before getting off.
“You’re not late. Hurry in.” Ji Xiao glanced over the place. This kid’s family conditions seemed pretty good if he could attend a private high school like this.
Ji Xiao used to come here a lot, because Shen Yu, the little sun of their family, had gone to high school here. His family had required him to pick Shen Yu up and drop him off every day, so every afternoon after school he had to race all the way here and squat at the school gate waiting.
When it had been his turn to go to high school, he had not been nearly so lucky. His mom had said, “You’ll just go by the school district. Wherever you get assigned, that’s where you go.”
“Thank you.” Ding Wei smiled at him.
In that instant, Ji Xiao felt a flood of emotion. This was the first time he had seen a real smile on Ding Wei’s face, something other than a sneer or a fake smile. The kid was pretty good-looking. When he smiled, his eyes narrowed into curved crescents.
“No problem. If there’s nothing else, I’m off.” Ji Xiao waved a hand.
“Wait…” Ding Wei had taken two steps away, then stopped and turned back to call out to him.
“Mm?”
“Um, are you free to come pick me up this afternoon?” Ding Wei looked at Ji Xiao, or rather, looked at Ji Xiao’s motorcycle. “I want to ride this again.”
Ji Xiao folded his arms. He had not expected Ding Wei to make that kind of request to someone he had only met twice, and not pleasantly either. He tapped his fingers against his chin a few times.
“Why should I?”
“Then forget it.” Ding Wei answered very simply, turned around, and walked straight toward the school gate.
Ji Xiao laughed. What kind of rotten temper was that? He started the motorcycle and shouted at Ding Wei’s retreating back.
“If I don’t get called out on a mission, I’ll come.”