In the middle of the night, several employees patrolled back and forth through the zoo with flashlights, searching enclosure after enclosure for Liu Liu. Xiao He silently followed at the very back of the group, his head lowered, looking terribly dejected.
“Don’t blame yourself,” the senior caretaker comforted him. “Who could have known that something that looks so stupid would actually know how to fake being sick?”
Xiao He kept his eyes lowered and did not reply. His expression was quiet, and no one could tell what he was thinking.
＊
The late-night search produced nothing. Liu Liu had disappeared without a trace.
Xiao He continued quietly cleaning the Pallas’s cat enclosure every day.
He was tall and handsome, and some tourists took photographs and videos of him and uploaded them online. In those photos and videos, he was sometimes sweeping or feeding the animals, sometimes sitting beside the enclosure with his head lowered as he quietly studied, and sometimes looking up at the top of the tallest tree in the enclosure as though something glittering were still there, endlessly drawing his gaze.
His thick exam workbook grew thinner and thinner as he completed more of it, and eventually the exam day would come. But hospital bills kept arriving one after another as though they would never end.
He sat at his desk calculating the expenses again and again before reluctantly, helplessly crossing out the money he had planned to spend on little fish for the Pallas’s cats the following week.
That day was his day off. As usual, he went to the hospital to visit his younger sister, Xiao Xin. When he returned home late that night, he wanted to continue studying, only to realize that he had left an important reference book at the Pallas’s cat enclosure.
In the middle of the night, he returned to the enclosure with a flashlight. He was just taking out his keys when he suddenly heard a rustling behind him. Something was thrashing around in the grass.
He bent down and peered hard into the undergrowth. A tiny, furry, round shape nimbly emerged from the grass. It stopped only a little over a meter away from him and stared directly at him without the slightest fear.
It was Liu Liu, who had been missing for more than a month—and dangling from its mouth was a… koi???
A huge koi from the pond beside them. The fish was bigger than Liu Liu’s entire body, and its tail was still flapping energetically.
Xiao He froze where he stood, staring at Liu Liu as Liu Liu stared back. After several seconds, Liu Liu dragged the koi over to him and dropped it at his feet with a smack! Then it stuck up its backside and stretched, gave Xiao He a proud look, raised its tail like a furry stick, and trotted into the grass. In the blink of an eye, it had vanished again.
Xiao He stared blankly at the enormous koi, then at the direction Liu Liu had disappeared.
Is… is this a reward for me?
Could it be that Liu Liu never ate the little fish I gave it because it thought they were too small?
＊
Xiao He examined the koi and found that, aside from being frightened and dehydrated, it seemed as though it might still survive. He tentatively returned it to the pond.
Once it entered the water, the koi swished its head and tail and soon swam back to join the others.
Xiao He breathed a sigh of relief and sat beside the koi pond. Looking around, he noticed Liu Liu hiding in the nearby grass, watching him from a distance.
For no particular reason, he felt incredibly happy.
He had not been this happy in a very long time. Smiling, he called loudly to Liu Liu, “I don’t eat your fish either!”
He returned to the Pallas’s cat enclosure to retrieve his book. Liu Liu followed him from a distance.
“Go on. I’m not going to catch you. You can leave.”
He came back out carrying the book. Liu Liu was still following from a distance.
“Go!”
＊
Liu Liu did not leave.
Not only did it not leave, it secretly followed Xiao He all the way home.
That night, after Xiao He turned off the light and went to sleep, he suddenly heard a series of clatter-clatter noises outside the window. The half-open window slammed with a bang! and a dark lump shot straight onto his blanket.
Xiao He sprang upright and hurriedly switched on the light. In the warm yellow glow filling the room, Liu Liu sat at the corner of his bed, its round body sinking into Xiao He’s thin blanket and creating a deep hollow.
It gave him a proud glance, kneaded the blanket for a while, apparently finding it sufficiently soft, then planted its bottom firmly down. Raising one plump, furry paw, it began grandly licking its fur.
Xiao He: “???”
＊
Perhaps because the weather had turned cold and it wanted somewhere warm to sleep, Liu Liu actually moved into Xiao He’s home.
It always disappeared somewhere at night, then spent its days curled into a ball on Xiao He’s blanket, sleeping soundly. Xiao He slept at night and worked during the day. It was not until his next day off that he discovered that this brazen Pallas’s cat had apparently been living in his home the entire time—and that this was its daily schedule. No wonder there always seemed to be an endless supply of shed fur on his blanket no matter how much he picked off.
In broad daylight, he stared helplessly at the Pallas’s cat sprawled on its back across his pillow.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll catch you and take you back?”
The Pallas’s cat narrowed its eyes and gave an enormous yawn, revealing the gaps where its two back teeth had been removed. Then it rubbed its face contentedly against his pillow and wiped a lump of eye gunk onto the fabric.
Xiao He: “Hey!”
＊
After washing the pillowcase and hanging it on the balcony to dry, Xiao He resigned himself to making something to eat.
Once again, he had noodles with vegetables. When he put the bowl on the table, Liu Liu curiously climbed up and sniffed it. Xiao He held a strand of noodles toward its mouth with his chopsticks, but Liu Liu refused to eat it and instead gave him a look full of pity and disdain.
A few days later, His Lordship the Pallas’s Cat personally took matters into his own paws and brought his housemate a chicken, a half-dead rooster.
The rooster had only a thread of life left; its head lolled crookedly as it ran around the room cluck-clucking and dripping blood everywhere. Xiao He was awakened halfway through his sleep by the rooster’s horrible cries. He switched on the light and found the entire room covered in blood like the scene of a murder.
Several chicken feathers clung to the brutal killer’s mouth. The culprit was standing proudly on the table, looking at him as though waiting to be praised.
Xiao He: “…”
＊
Early the next morning, Xiao He carried the now-cold corpse of the chicken from door to door among his neighbors. After locating the original crime scene, he apologized profusely and paid compensation.
Although the chicken was plump and tempting, Xiao He resisted the urge to make chicken stewed with mushrooms. In front of Liu Liu, he carefully wrapped the carcass and placed it in the trash.
“I’m not accepting your gifts. Don’t bring me any more.”
Liu Liu stood neither too near nor too far from him, tilting its head at the trash bin.
A Pallas’s cat’s brain found human behavior very difficult to understand.
If Xiao He accepted this chicken, Liu Liu would go out hunting again—catching fish, birds, perhaps even other people’s pets—and damage an urban ecosystem already hanging by a thread beneath the encroachment of concrete and steel.
He could not bear to send Liu Liu back to the zoo, but deep down he knew perfectly well that Liu Liu should not be running loose through the city.
He knew Liu Liu should not remain in the city, yet he could not bear to send it away either.
He loved waking before dawn to see Liu Liu crouched on his windowsill, its profile turned toward the sunrise outside. Warm early light fell into Liu Liu’s eyes, making them bright and clear. He had grown attached to coming home dusty and exhausted every evening, touching the hollow Liu Liu left in his blanket, and feeling the faint lingering warmth still there.
＊
For many days after that, Liu Liu did not appear at Xiao He’s home again.