The Cat He Came For
When Liu Qianxiu returned to work on Monday, a nurse mentioned it almost immediately.
“Doctor Liu, that calico you used to feed died a few days ago.”
The pen in his hand stopped.
Liu Qianxiu looked up.
“How?”
“She was hit by a car.”
The nurse sighed.
“I heard it from the head nurse. Apparently, she’d given birth to a litter of kittens. The head nurse was going to take them home after work and find people to adopt them, but by the time she went to look, they were gone.”
Her expression turned worried.
“Do you think somebody took them?”
She hesitated.
“Newborn kittens are difficult to keep alive. If someone adopted them, that would be fine, but...”
Her voice dropped.
“I’ve seen stories about people deliberately taking kittens just to hurt them.”
Liu Qianxiu closed the medical chart.
His expression did not change.
“Prepare for surgery.”
The nurse blinked.
“Oh.”
Then she hurried after him.
She had assumed Liu Qianxiu was fond of the calico because he fed it so often.
But from the moment she told him the cat had died, his expression had barely shifted.
Everyone at the hospital called him Daoist Liu.
Watching him now, the nickname really did seem appropriate.
Detached.
Unruffled.
Almost untouched by ordinary emotion.
At noon, after finishing his morning work, Liu Qianxiu went to the hospital security office.
He asked for the surveillance footage from two days earlier.
The shrubs near the hospital entrance saw little foot traffic, although plenty of cars were parked nearby.
The footage ran at high speed.
When a figure finally appeared, Liu Qianxiu clicked the mouse.
The image stopped.
A tall, slender woman stood beside the shrubs.
She bent down and reached between them.
When she straightened again, several tiny bundles of fur were cradled awkwardly in her arms.
She stood there talking to another woman.
After a moment, she happened to glance toward the security camera.
Then she walked out of frame.
Light flickered across the monitor.
Liu Qianxiu rewound the footage slightly.
Paused.
The woman reappeared.
The glow of the screen reflected in his eyes.
Still.
Deep.
Unreadable.
“What’s she holding?” the security guard beside him asked. “Kittens?”
The guard’s gaze lingered on the woman in the footage for a second longer than necessary.
With Liu Qianxiu standing beside him, however, he quickly redirected his attention to the animals.
“Strays, probably.”
He looked at the frozen image again.
“That young lady seems kindhearted. Though those kittens are so small, who knows if she can keep them alive.”
Liu Qianxiu stood.
“Thank you.”
Then he opened the door and left.
Mu Wan received Liu Qianxiu’s call just after being lowered from a wire harness.
The rain that had lingered for days was finally gone.
Beneath the returning sun, moisture steamed from the ground, leaving the air hot and oppressively humid.
Mu Wan stood in the shade beside a city wall, dressed in men’s historical costume.
Her face was flushed from the heat.
“Hello?”
Her forehead itched.
She scratched it absently, and sweat slid down along her fingertip.
“This is Liu Qianxiu.”
His voice was as low as ever.
Cool and clear, like spring water running down a mountain.
Now that was unexpected.
It was Monday.
The nurse had told her he would be back at work today.
Mu Wan suddenly remembered telling Lin Wei that she should invite him to dinner once he returned, partly as an apology and partly to thank him for the trouble she had caused.
Then filming resumed.
And she completely forgot.
“You’re back.”
Mu Wan crouched down.
Heat trapped beneath the costume rose around her, making her face even warmer.
She smiled.
“I’m sorry about last time. And thank you.”
Then she added politely, “My wound’s almost healed. How about I treat you to dinner after work today?”
“No need.”
Immediate.
Concise.
Mu Wan’s smile receded slightly, like the edge of a cloud curling back across the sky.
Her voice remained bright.
“Oh.”
She went straight to the point.
“Then why did you call?”
Liu Qianxiu sat alone in his office.
It was quiet enough to hear paper rustle.
A draft from the air conditioner lifted one corner of an ambulance record on his desk.
His voice remained calm.
Economical.
“I want the kittens.”
Mu Wan understood immediately.
He had known the calico well enough to feed her.
Most likely, he had known she was pregnant.
Now he had returned from leave, learned she was dead, checked the surveillance footage, and discovered that Mu Wan had taken her kittens.
But when Mu Wan first met him, she had specifically asked whether the calico belonged to him.
He had said no.
Which meant the kittens did not belong to him either.
Technically, he had no claim on them.
Mu Wan pressed the tip of her tongue lightly against the back of her teeth.
A smile appeared.
“Oh?”
Her tone turned almost careless.
“Which one do you want?”
Her voice seemed to unfold little by little.
At the beginning of the call, it had been restrained.
Now something soft and distinctly feminine slipped into it, like petals gradually opening.
She was a cat again.
Her voice in Liu Qianxiu’s ear overlapped with the voice he remembered from the corridor at Qingsong Pavilion.
The warmth of her body against his.
Slender arms around his waist.
Alcohol-heated skin pressed close.
Mu Wan had been drunk.
She remembered none of it.
Liu Qianxiu did.
A page of the ambulance record finally lifted beneath the air-conditioning vent.
Thin white paper.
Printed boxes.
Name.
Telephone number.
Address.
Liu Qianxiu said nothing.
From somewhere beyond Mu Wan, the assistant director called for everyone to return to set.
Her attention shifted.
When she spoke again, the teasing softness had disappeared.
“Sorry, Doctor Liu. The kittens are mine now. I can’t give them to you.”
She stood.
“If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work.”
Then she ended the call.
By that afternoon, the nurses had already moved on.
When the young nurse ran into the head nurse, their conversation was about Taobao’s midyear sale and what was worth buying.
No one mentioned the calico again.
Once the brief sadness had passed, the dead cat quietly slipped out of everyone’s thoughts.
Like frost falling soundlessly from a branch into snow.
Gone without a trace.
Liu Qianxiu performed one surgery that afternoon.
After signing the last documents, he left work on time.
He got into his car.
Started the engine.
A few minutes later, the vehicle disappeared into the evening traffic outside the hospital.
The sky had cleared that morning.
After a full day beneath the sun, the asphalt was once again dry and hot.
The earth, however, had only half dried.
Dark brown soil showed beneath patches of new weeds, green life pushing upward in the shade of the trident maple trees.
Compared with Nanfeng Apartments, the residential compound in front of Liu Qianxiu was old and worn.
Clear sunlight filtered through the treetops and fell across weathered walls, illuminating cracks, stains, and decades of age.
Utility poles stood close against the buildings.
Thick electrical cables stretched across the rough façades, running from one block to another.
Between two buildings, birds occasionally landed on suspended wires.
Liu Qianxiu entered the first building in the second row.
The stairwell was dim.
Several days of rain had left behind a damp, slightly musty chill that the sunlight had not yet managed to dry.
White paint had peeled from the railings.
Rust freckled the exposed metal like spots on a quail egg.
The building was old.
The stairs began immediately inside the entrance.
Beside them was a basement, its doorway dark and silent, miscellaneous belongings piled against the wall nearby.
The steps were shallow.
Their edges had been worn smooth by countless feet over the years.
The stairwell was cramped.
A small window sat on each landing between floors.
After days of rain, the glass had been washed unexpectedly clean.
Sunlight streamed through and broke across the floor in irregular fragments.
Liu Qianxiu was almost at the third floor when he heard a door open.
He stopped on the landing between the second and third floors.
Then he looked up.
Mu Wan stood above him on the stairs.
She wore a green halter top and denim shorts.
Her long hair had been tied up, revealing pale collarbones and the clean line of her slender neck.
Above them, her small face looked vivid and striking.
A slight crease sat between her brows.
The moment she saw Liu Qianxiu, it eased.
He stood below her with the light at his back.
His skin looked almost cool beneath it, his features sharply defined, his presence quiet and restrained.
Inside the narrow, aging stairwell, he seemed profoundly out of place.
Like porcelain recovered from a sunken ship, only one corner revealed beneath the light, yet its value impossible to mistake.
Mu Wan looked at him.
Her red lips parted.
Her voice carried a faint echo through the stairwell.
“Doctor Liu, did you come to see me?”
Liu Qianxiu did not answer.
His attention had already settled on what she was holding.
A dark green blanket was wrapped around a tiny black-and-white kitten.
“What happened to it?”
Mu Wan lowered her eyes to Zhongfen.
The corners of her mouth fell slightly.
Her voice softened.
“It’s not doing very well.”
— End of Chapter 5 —
he wants you~ HAHAHA thank u for the chapter!!
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