Pinning Her Down

“So you’re officially together now?”

Wei Yin thought it over for a moment, then nodded with conviction. “Yes.”

At this point, there was no need for any flowery “let’s be together” nonsense. She was a real, proper girlfriend now!

After hearing Wei Yin explain the whole thing from beginning to end, Xu Ya Qing marveled on the other end of the call, “My cousin really can hold it in. I’ve admired her since I was little.”

Wei Yin was proud by association. “Hehe.”

“What have you been busy with? You haven’t been to the studio these past few days.” Wei Yin spoke while painting a pottery blank. “I keep seeing fans asking about you under the studio account.”

During this month while Wei Yin had been traveling all over the country, Xu Ya Qing had been busy with who knew what. Since leaving Yu Tiantian’s place, she had barely been seen.

More than a month had passed. Aside from a few phone calls here and there, there had been no other contact.

Wei Yin would send her travel photos; Xu Ya Qing would only occasionally reply with a word or two.

“Just... something came up.”

“That’s too vague,” Wei Yin said in disgust. “What is it, trouble? Are you in trouble?”

Xu Ya Qing laughed, her tone a little tired and conflicted. “It’s nothing. I’ve just been helping out at home these past few days.”

“At home? So you’ve finally decided to take over the family business?” Wei Yin said happily. “Hua Yu and your aunt and uncle must be thrilled.”

Xu Ya Qing choked. “It’s not exactly...”

“But what about the studio? Didn’t you sell your soul to art?” Wei Yin was as sharp-tongued as ever. “When are you buying it back so you can sell it off again to the merchants?”

“Wei Xiao Yin, shut up,” Xu Ya Qing snapped, exasperated. “I’m just a little short on cash, and I need my family’s help with something. I went back, and they kept me there.”

Wei Yin pricked up her ears. “I can lend you some.”

“How much money could you even have?” Xu Ya Qing said automatically. “What you make barely counts as pocket change.”

Wei Yin looked at her ceramic wall, then mentally tallied up all her savings.

“It really isn’t much,” Wei Yin said thoughtfully, “but Pedro transferred her villa to my name.”

Xu Ya Qing: !!??!!

“When did that happen!” Xu Ya Qing’s shout burst through the phone. Wei Yin’s eardrums stung, and she quickly held her phone farther away.

Xu Ya Qing fired off one question after another; Wei Yin couldn’t get a word in no matter how she tried.

“Wait,” Xu Ya Qing finally came back to her senses. “So what if you have a house? I have houses too. My grandparents on both sides left me places. The problem is there’s no cash!”

For people like Hua Yu and Xu Ya Qing, their family assets were indeed substantial. But the actual cash they could hold in their hands and use wasn’t much different from an ordinary high-ranking alpha’s.

“What do you need that much cash for?” Wei Yin asked suspiciously. “Pulling something?”

Xu Ya Qing didn’t even bother arguing with her. “You wouldn’t understand. Anyway, I’m busy. Once I’m done... and once my family is willing to help me, I’ll tell you.”

After the call ended, Wei Yin immediately reported the news to Pedro.

Pedro said she didn’t know exactly what Xu Ya Qing was doing, but she did know she’d gone back to help the family.

Xu Ya Qing was an adult, and an alpha at that; she had gone home to help, not been tricked by outsiders. So Wei Yin didn’t ask any further about her.

The inspiration she’d brought back from traveling was rich and plentiful, and Wei Yin settled into the studio very comfortably.

Now it was October. The weather was crisp and pleasant, osmanthus blossoms filled the air, and the fallen leaves had piled up in a thick layer, crackling softly underfoot.

At noon, the sunlight in the courtyard was just right; warm, but not hot. In the afternoon, a cool autumn breeze blew through, carrying the scent of unknown wildflowers from the yard.

Chou Tuan Run Errand delivered food and drinks on time every day. Today’s delivery was big crabs.

The crab bodies were plump and soft, and when she held them, they felt very heavy; after removing the legs, each one was as big as her palm.

“See? This is Hua Yu’s little scheme,” Wei Yin muttered, holding up her phone to take photos as she grumbled. “She feeds me something every day so I’ll think about her all day long!”

“Delicious food can have a healing effect,” Wei Yin said while sorting through the photos, then sent the ones with better color and composition to Hua Yu. “So when is Dr. Hua going to heal me completely? That’s the question.”

Hua Yu didn’t reply for a while, so Wei Yin tore into the crab and started eating.

When she was young, she had lived by the sea in the south. She vaguely remembered following the adults down to the shore to gather seafood. In those blurry fragments, she had been no taller than her mother’s thigh; her mother wore loose white trousers and walked barefoot on the sand with her pant legs rolled high. Little Wei Yin would hug her mother’s leg, whining as she lifted her chubby foot to step on her mother’s instep.

Grains of coarse sand would get between her toes, scraping painfully against a child’s tender skin.

Her mother would pick her up with one arm, carry her to the shore, squat down, and, laughing at her, splash water over her to rinse her off.

Then little Wei Yin would stop crying, slide down from her arms with a giggle, and play in the water and sand by herself.

Wei Yin felt that she had always been able to stay optimistic and cheerful, probably because she’d had a childhood full of love.

“When I have time, I should go see Mom again.”

Just then, a WeChat notification sounded.

Hua Yu’s reply came through.

【Aunt Sun made the crabs. There are still plenty at home; if you like them, I can bring you more tomorrow.】

So it was Aunt Sun’s cooking after all. Wearing gloves and with both hands occupied, Wei Yin originally wanted to send a voice message, but she didn’t know what to say, so she just replied with an emoji and asked, “What are you doing?”

On Hua Yu’s side, the typing indicator stayed on for a long time before a reply finally came.

【Cuddling cats】

【？？？Where is the kitten】

Wei Yin had walked all over the neighborhood around her home and hadn’t seen a single stray cat. She guessed the upscale complex had rules about strays, though a few households did walk their pet cats.

Wei Yin had once seen a chinchilla cat; it had so much fur it looked huge, almost like a little dog.

Could Hua Yu have gone to a cat café? Or to a colleague’s or neighbor’s place?

Then a video came through.

Wei Yin opened it and hit play.

It was their home’s small balcony. The balcony had originally only held a rattan-and-hemp table and chairs, plus a little wooden cabinet for potted plants, but now a whole wall of cat climbing frames had been added, and the windows were tightly sealed.

Sunlight came through the screen, spilling an orange-gold glow across the carpet on the floor. Hua Yu was sitting cross-legged on the ground, teasing a tiny kitten in her arms with a long feather.

The kitten was only about two or three weeks old, not yet at its cutest stage; its body was small and its head was big, and when it stretched out its paws to reach the feather, its limbs still weren’t fully under control, so it looked adorably wobbly.

Then Hua Yu glanced at the camera, pressed her lips together, picked the kitten up, and held it close to the lens.

The kitten’s head hung down from Hua Yu’s tiger’s-mouth grip; its chin rested against Hua Yu’s slender knuckles. When it saw itself in the phone screen, it even tilted its head.

Too cute!!

Most importantly, the kitten was calico!

Wei Yin had also raised a calico kitten just like this when she was little, but after it turned two, it ran out of the house and never came back.

This one’s markings were a little different from the kitten in her memory, but it was just as cute and beautiful.

A pretty tri-colored calico; even this young, it already had the looks.

Wei Yin watched the video three times in a row, swallowed hard, and felt her heart itch. The urge to cuddle a cat was surging up inside her.

【I’m about to feed her milk. I’m using a 5 ml syringe, but she seems to hate it. Can you raise kittens?】

Wei Yin screamed inwardly: I can!!!

【You need to use a soft nipple. A kitten this size can take 10 ml at a time】

【Also, kittens can’t regulate their own body temperature yet; make sure to keep her warm all the time】

Hua Yu still didn’t reply for a long time after that. Wei Yin got so anxious she couldn’t even finish her crab; she took off her gloves and was just about to make a video call.

Hua Yu sent a picture.

[photo]

【She keeps crying. I don’t know what’s wrong】

In the photo, Hua Yu was holding the kitten in her palm, both of them looking at the camera side by side.

The kitten’s face was pressed against Hua Yu’s; the two of them were staring wide-eyed, both looking ridiculously innocent.

Hua Yu’s cobalt-blue eyes and the pale blue film still lingering in the kitten’s pupils shared a similarly melancholy shade. With both the person and the cat having such round, large eyes, they looked pitiful no matter how you saw them.

As if asking, why haven’t you hugged me yet?

Wei Yin now wanted to fly back immediately and put the kitten in her palm so she could knead it over and over.

【Do you want to come home and check on her?】

Unable to hold back any longer, Hua Yu finally showed her true colors.

Wei Yin’s expression twisted into utter conflict; she resisted the urge to grit her teeth and typed, “No.”

Hua Yu didn’t say anything else, only sent several more photos of the calico kitten’s strange and varied sleeping positions.

There was one chewing on its own foot, one craning its neck with its head hanging back, one curled into a ball, and one sprawled on its back with all four paws in the air like it was surrendering.

Wei Yin examined each one and clicked save.

She was so torn she wanted to scratch her head and stomp her feet; Hua Yu really knew how to do this. How could she come up with such a cheating trick? Too much!

After thinking it over, she still couldn’t let it go and called her.

“Where did you get that kitten?” Wei Yin asked.

Before Hua Yu could answer, the kitten’s mewling cries came through first; just by listening, you could tell it was cursing. Then came Hua Yu’s smiling voice. “I picked her up on the way home.”

“Then she was probably a weak kitten abandoned by her mother, or one that got left behind during a move,” Wei Yin said pityingly. “I’ve never picked up a kitten before.”

If you found a cat while walking down the road, then that kitten was fated to be with you; Wei Yin was deeply envious. “She’s so little, she probably can’t even defecate on her own yet. You have to help her go.”

“Is it that troublesome?” Hua Yu must have set the phone aside; her voice was a little muffled, with a cool edge to it. “I can’t do it.”

Wei Yin hurriedly searched for a video. “Wait, there’s a tutorial online. I’ll send it to you. It’s easy.”

Hua Yu said flatly, “Dirty.”

“How can you call a kitten dirty!” Wei Yin couldn’t believe that Hua Yu had picked up the kitten and still hadn’t even helped it pee. “She’ll get constipated to death!”

“Fine, I’ll try.”

Wei Yin was still uneasy. “Have you ever taken care of kittens before? They need milk every four or five hours.”

Hua Yu rejected her outright. “No. I have surgery tomorrow. Work is so busy; how would I have time to take care of her?”

Wei Yin fell into hesitation again.

“Alright, enough talking; I have to get back to work,” the kitten cried out several more times, Hua Yu clicked her tongue, and her tone was disgusted beyond measure. “Let’s hang up.”

In fact, during the entire call, Hua Yu had been helping the kitten defecate. Once the call ended, Hua Yu put down the little thing she had been holding in the air, its four paws flailing with nowhere to land. The moment it touched the ground, the kitten felt secure and immediately stopped crying.

Hua Yu rubbed the fluffy little head and pinched one of the little ears that had just perked up but still hadn’t fully stood straight. “Not bad this time; I’ll add half a spoon of goat milk powder for you.”

The kitten mewed; the kitten knew nothing.

And another person, because of the kitten’s piercing cries before the call was hung up, spent the whole night dreaming about the little thing.

At first it was the calico cat from when she was a child, coming back after getting fat, with a mouse in its mouth, tossing it at her feet.

Then her mother grabbed a slipper and chased the cat while beating it. “Ahhh, hurry up and take it away!”

The kitten took the mouse away, then came back with something else in its mouth.

Wei Yin was laughing so hard she doubled over beside them, watching the show; then the kitten leapt straight onto the sofa and placed the thing it was carrying in its mouth onto Wei Yin’s lap.

Then it opened its mouth and started speaking human language: “I am the cat god of the mortal world. My cultivation is complete; I’m about to ascend and return home. This cat is my child, so I’m leaving it to you to raise from now on.”

Wei Yin looked closely; it was the little calico Hua Yu had held in her palm during the day.

The little calico opened its mouth and spat out a mouthful of milk. “Bleh.”

Oh my god, Hua Yu had made the kitten choke on milk!!

Wei Yin jolted upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat.

The dream had been one thing after another, completely illogical yet somehow bizarrely harmonious.

She checked her phone: 6:30 in the morning. There was still more than an hour before Hua Yu left the house.

Wei Yin sent Hua Yu a good-morning message.

【How is the calico kitten?】

On the other side, Hua Yu was working hard to pull the nipple out of the kitten’s mouth while pinching its round little belly, and slowly replied:

【She doesn’t have much energy; she can’t drink the milk and seems to be sick】

Wei Yin told her to hurry and take it to the hospital, but all she got back was Hua Yu’s cold five-word reply: “I’m not a veterinarian.”

Wei Yin nearly lost her mind; she couldn’t focus on work anymore.

Fine, Hua Yu. Fine.

【Okay】

Hua Yu stared at the single “Okay” on the screen and said in bafflement, “Hm? What does that mean?”

The kitten understood nothing and was lying on the blanket, purring in its sleep.

Hua Yu double-checked that the warming measures were in place, sealed the balcony shut, and left, closing the door behind her.

An hour later, the front door was pushed open in an extremely light, extremely quiet way.

Wei Yin, wearing a coat and sunglasses and carrying a small airline pet carrier, slipped inside like a thief.

She looked around, quickly spotted the balcony, and in one swift motion rushed over, opened the door, grabbed the cat, stuffed it into the carrier, and casually swept up the nipple, goat milk powder, pee pads, and other kitten supplies before turning and bolting.

The whole process took less than three minutes; once she was gone, so was the cat.

The kitten slept like a log and didn’t stir at all.

On the other side, when Hua Yu got off work, Yang Cha was still subtly probing her about whether Wei Yin had come home from her trip.

Thinking of the adorable kitten at home that had captured Wei Yin’s heart, Hua Yu curved her lips in a faint smile and said with absolute certainty, “Soon.”