Incurable Chapter 6 Part 1

Liu Qianxiu drove Mu Wan and Zhong Fen to a pet hospital.

The moment they walked in, Mu Wan explained what had been happening. The veterinarian took Zhong Fen straight away, and a staff member guided Liu Qianxiu and Mu Wan to a waiting room.

The waiting room was divided into small glass cubicles. Inside, there sat a round table and two chairs. Through the glass door, they could see the veterinarian examining Zhong Fen.

After filming, Mu Wan had rushed home and mixed the formula for all three kittens. Da Tou and Er Tong ate well. Zhong Fen barely drank and then threw everything up.

Not only that, Zhong Fen looked wrong. While Da Tou and Er Tong crawled and rolled around the nest like two tiny storms, Zhong Fen shoved its face into the corner of the bed and stayed there with its little backside sticking up. Mu Wan tried feeding it twice more. Each time, it vomited.

That was when panic finally bit.

Newborn kittens without a mother’s milk had almost no immunity. One careless draft, one bad feeding, and they could be gone. Zhong Fen was spitting up and fading fast. Mu Wan changed clothes, bundled them up, and ran out to the pet hospital.

At the door, she ran straight into Liu Qianxiu.

Now they sat across from each other, one on each side of the round table, both watching the vet through the glass. The entire time, neither spoke.

The room was so quiet it felt sealed.

Mu Wan broke it first.

“How did you find my place?”

The sound appeared abruptly in the stillness. Liu Qianxiu turned his head slightly.

Mu Wan’s hands were clasped on the tabletop. She looked at him directly. When his gaze met hers, she smiled, lips curving upward as if she could soften the question into something harmless.

“Patients brought into the ER by ambulance have address records,” he said.

“Oh.” Understanding flickered across her face. Her eyes lowered briefly, fingers pressing together once, then she looked up again with a calm, negotiating expression.

“I asked you in the hospital. You said the calico wasn’t your cat.”

Meaning, you have no right to take her kittens back.

“I did.” Liu Qianxiu heard the unspoken part. His face stayed calm. “But you can’t raise them.”

The words were light, almost casual.

The impact was not.

Mu Wan licked her lower lip, then turned her head. Through the glass, the veterinarian was holding Zhong Fen. Zhong Fen’s tiny paws kicked wildly. The glass muffled its voice, but Mu Wan didn’t need to hear it to know it was crying.

“It’s my first time,” she said, voice steady. “I’ll do my best.”

“They’re too small,” he replied. “It’s easy to lose them.”

Mu Wan went quiet, because he was right.

The past few days, she hadn’t slept well. The kittens were in her room, close enough that she woke up repeatedly at night to check if they were still breathing. She wasn’t the soft-hearted type. She’d never had pets before and hadn’t wanted any.

If she returned these three to Liu Qianxiu, she could easily buy a purebred cat instead, prettier, healthier, easier.

But it wasn’t the same.

These three had already slipped into her life, filling the empty parts with noise and warmth. She called herself their “stepmother,” but it felt more like their real mother. Their mother had died the moment they entered the world, and they clung to her instinctively. That dependence gave Mu Wan a satisfaction she didn’t want to admit she needed.

Every morning, she woke to milky little meows, soft as breath, gentler than the first strip of sunlight.

Feelings grew fast. And once they took root, they didn’t pull out cleanly.

Mu Wan wanted these three.

She tried to think of a way around it. Nothing came.

So she forced herself to calm down and let her thoughts shift to Liu Qianxiu instead.

She didn’t understand him.

He had only fed the calico occasionally. The calico hadn’t entrusted him with its babies. And weren’t Daoists supposed to be detached, unbothered, free of desire?

Mu Wan stopped trying to make it make sense. Her brows knit slightly, as white snow pressed into a crease.

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

Liu Qianxiu met her eyes. The sharpness in her gaze was back now, no longer polite. He didn’t seem bothered by it. His voice stayed quiet and even.

“I’ll raise them first. When they’re a little bigger, you take them back. If you’re worried, you can come to my place anytime to see them.”

The air conditioning ran cold. Liu Qianxiu sat there with that pale, clean complexion, long limbs, and an expression that rarely changed. He looked like someone wrapped in mist, distant and untouchable, like a deity who had wandered into a room meant for ordinary people.

Mu Wan propped an elbow on the table and leaned in.

She stopped when she was still a fist’s distance away.

“Doctor Liu,” she asked softly, “did you know me before?”

The words landed lightly, like a ribbon skimming water, leaving only a shallow ripple.

Her arms braced her, her green halter top framing skin that looked almost too bright under the cold light. Collarbone half-revealed, shoulders straight, bone structure elegant. Her pupils were clear and dark, reflecting his face as she studied him.

It wasn’t a glance. It was an examination, slow and deliberate, as if Mu Wan were drawing his brows and eyes with her gaze.

Liu Qianxiu lowered his eyes slightly. The faint scent of her drifted closer. He looked at the soft red at the corners of her eyes, the shine of moisture there, and his voice dropped, deep and cool.

“Why do you think that?”

Mu Wan leaned back and tapped the table once with a fingertip.

From her ER admission, to his attention on her birthmark, to running into him at dinner, to him personally showing up at her door over the kittens, he didn’t feel as distant as his reputation suggested. Or maybe he wasn’t distant from her.

Yet everything he’d done had an explanation. The birthmark could have been mistaken for a wound. Dragging Mu Wan back to the dinner was because she was his patient. She showed up at her home because she refused to give up the kittens over the phone.

He wasn’t chasing her.

He was chasing survival for three fragile lives.

Mu Wan didn’t answer the question. She only said, “You still haven’t answered mine.”

“I don’t know you,” Liu Qianxiu said. “I just want them to live.”

Mu Wan withdrew her arms fully, widening the space between them again. Then she smiled, soft and bright.

“Fine. Then thank you.”

The conversation had the shape of custody negotiations.

She wanted to raise them, but first, they had to survive. They were both acting for the kittens’ sake. There was no reason to become enemies over ownership.

The examination results came back. Nothing severe. Without mother’s milk, newborn kittens had weak immunity, and even a draft could trigger vomiting. Zhong Fen was still too small for medication, so the hospital wanted to keep it under observation for two days.

Once Zhong Fen was settled, Liu Qianxiu drove Mu Wan home.

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