CHAPTER 1

Content Warning: This novel contains subject material that may be disturbing or upsetting, including elements of niche or unconventional emotions, violence, foul language, and death. This novel is recommended for readers aged 18 and above.

I woke up, and Li Haohao had grown a pair of cat ears.

Two weeks ago, she grew twelve fingers. Last week, she grew a full beard on her face.

She stood in front of the mirror, studying her own face. On her right cheek were two small scabs - she had cut herself shaving with a razor a few days ago. I stood behind her, silent like a stone, silently urging her on.

She immediately lowered her head to wipe her face, then turned her head, pointing to the cat ears on top.

She lowered her head for me to touch, and there were the cat ears right before my eyes.

They had the same texture as the ears of a calico cat I had as a child—soft and sensitive. My fingers hovered, and they involuntarily twitched.

I lifted up her hair to look and saw her human ears underneath.

Great, now she had four ears.

As I let her hair fall back down, her naturally curly hair puffed up like a big bundle of straw, hanging all the way down her back.

She resembled a gypsy fortune teller, slender limbs adorned with jingling bead strings and decorations, waving her arms and ankles as she walked behind me to watch me wash up.

The water was icy cold, today's weather might not be too good.

In the mirror, Li Haohao peered and poked at the cat ears curiously. As I finished spitting out the last mouthful of water and watched it flow into the drain. Li Haohao tugged at my clothes and asked, "What is this?"

"Cat ears."

"Cat ears..." Li Haohao repeated, poking at the fuzzy thing in the mirror. Even her own ears seemed unfamiliar to her, she brushed them aside, and they hung down, dodging and twitching. She found it amusing, poked at them several times, grabbed them, and folded them over.

I got dressed, then opened the door to go outside, and caught a whiff of a faintly sour and cool breath. I closed the door, picked up the towel by the door and wiped the tips of my boots.

It was raining outside, today, I could only do indoor work.

I started taking off my clothes, and Li Haohao ran over—her ears still insistently folded over, wanting to show me.

I made a sound to indicate that I saw them.

They perked up with a flutter.

I sat down on the chair, struggling to undo the three rows of buttons on my boots. Li Haohao dashed around, the golden bead strings on her ankles reflecting a hazy halo, as if from a century ago.

She ran over again, this time squatting down, covering my hands with hers. She was like an overbearing plant, needing a great deal of attention to flourish.

She lifted her hair, revealing her human ears, and said to me, "Ears."

I nodded. "Yes."

She touched the top of her head. "Cat ears."

"Yes."

Two nouns combined together, Li Haohao easily noticed the difference in pronunciation: "Cat, what is a cat?"

What is a cat? I find it difficult to explain this clearly to Li Haohao in one language.

Li Haohao is thirsty for knowledge. When she mentions this unknown thing, her eyes widen. Her golden pupils make her gaze particularly prominent, focused on my face—I see myself through her eyes, a tired and withered woman, with a messy low ponytail, protective gear piled at my waist like overlapping leaves, a wilting flower growing in the middle, hanging my head.

Instead of asking me what a cat is, it's better to ask Li Haohao what she did to grow cat ears.

Imagination doesn't just come out of thin air. Li Haohao must have seen an image of a cat somewhere.

"Did you entered my room?"

Li Haohao immediately averted her gaze. "No, I didn't."

"You looked at my notebook?"

"I didn't look at the notebook, I looked at the work log." She confessed.

"So you also went through my drawers?"

Li Haohao covered her mouth, looked up at me briefly, and then reached forward as if grabbing the words she just said and swallowed them back into her mouth.

I watched her performance, undid the last button, and put the boots back in place. "Last night?"

"I didn't go in." Still stubbornly denying it.

I don't actually intend to interrogate Li Haohao. After seeing her grow cat ears, I knew she must have sneaked into my room and seen something.

Li Haohao is like a primary school student secretly eating spicy strips in class, thinking she was invisible. So she continued to argue, wondering how I discovered her misdeeds from the cat ears.

"Did I snore last night?" I asked.

"No, you talked in your sleep."

After she answered, she covered her mouth in panic and reached out to grab the words she just said and swallow them.

Li Haohao liked to sneak into my room and spy on my life—openly peering into my diary, watching me sleep, touching my belongings to figure out how I used them.

Truthfully, in my time, this behavior would be considered p*rverted act. I would need to call the police, alert others, and be prepared with weapons. In more severe cases, I would need to move and avoid such prying eyes.

But if this act of peeping were transformed into that of a cat or a dog, the situation would be different.

For example, if your dog insists on you opening the bathroom door to see what you're doing, or if your cat lazily lies on your chest while you sleep and watches you for a while, you wouldn't feel offended, just amused. That's how it is with Li Haohao for me.

But I still draw boundaries and forbid her from coming in.

My room is at the end of the third floor, with my name and title displayed. I changed into a hooded sweater and rough pants, and as I walked towards the door, Li Haohao kept making whining sounds expressing her resistance.

But before settling the score with her, halfway up to the fourth floor, I entered the circulation area to check the acid rain data.

Fortunately, everything is fine.

I moved the rainwater collector aside, set the timer for two hours, checked the remaining purified water level enough for half a month's use, and closed the circulation area.

As the door closed with a bang, Li Haohao suddenly shivered. I turned around, and she began to confess, "I couldn't sleep, so I snuck in to take a look. Your drawers weren't locked."

"Was that my fault?"

Li Haohao nodded, throwing the blame on me without a care, "You didn't lock them."

"What did you see?"

"Work logs."

"Tell me more."

"There were some words." She started to recall, counting on her fingers.

Of course, work logs would certainly have some words... that's how paper documents are, unable to contain sound and video.

She started counting on her second finger, "There were many unfamiliar scribbles."

They were numbers. She could recognize individual Arabic numerals up to twenty, but when they were combined, she became dizzy and couldn't recognize them.

She counted her third finger, "There was colored paper with a chicken on it."

I thought about it.

She recognized the chicken.

Before the wind started yesterday, the headquarters' supplies arrived—some writing paper, two bottles of ink, and some food. They took away the reports and samples from the previous quarter.

Before storing the food, I saw a vacuum-sealed whole chicken.

It was Li Haohao's first time welcoming the supplies, and she was very excited, circling around me several times.

So that chicken just appeared on the dining table, hastily heated up.

In the past, this chicken couldn't be considered a rare item - smoked chicken, roasted chicken, boiled chicken, grilled chicken, braised chicken... it seemed like a pre-war stock, not to be scrutinized for expiry dates. When uncovered, the strong smell of curry hit one's face, hence making it hard to discern the quality of the chicken itself.

Li Haohao smelled the scent of curry for the first time, and it overwhelmed her with fragrance, causing her to lean on the table and ask about this strange thing, "What is this?"

"It's a chicken."

Ah yes, she had seen a chicken in my work log just yesterday.

I opened the door, and Li Haohao wanted to follow me in. I turned back and pointed, she stiffened and stood straight on the line I drew, fidgeting to stick to the wall, lifting her foot...

"Li Haohao."

She knew that when I called her by name, the situation would turn serious. She shrank back, clasping her hands behind her back, her golden eyes unblinkingly fixed on me.

I opened the drawer, the lock wasn't tampered with, I had just forgotten to close it.

A thick work log, larger than A4 paper, as thick as a Chinese dictionary, I brought it out and placed it on the table. It had some weight to it, and I wondered how Li Haohao managed to sneak it out to read without waking me up.

The evidence was clear, but Li Haohao was evading reality, clinging to the door and trapping herself outside.

I opened the work log and easily found that photo.

I opened the door and pointed to the photo for Li Haohao to see.

Li Haohao happily pointed at the photo, "Chicken!"

I had kept this old, ancient photograph in my work log - the only thing, besides my own body, that would survive the war.

It was from when I was five years old, standing on a stool to reach for a cat in the cabinet.

The cat crouched, hiding its four paws under its body, its tail sweeping over its front paws, eyes slightly narrowed.

Seeing me not moving, Li Haohao excitedly poked the cat, "Chicken!"

"Is that a chicken?" I asked.

Li Haohao was certain: "Yes, here is the leg, hidden underneath the body, there's a long one that wraps around from here."

She pointed at the cat's tail: "Chicken neck, hard to chew."

Then she pointed at the cat's head: "Butt, tasty."

At this point, she became somewhat uncertain.

Our chicken's butt is just a small tuft, but the "butt" of this "chicken" in front of her is clearly very large.

But all other features matched.

So she concluded, pointing at the cat's head, "Here is soft, no bones."

I pointed to her head: "Cat's ears."

Li Haohao was dumbfounded, staring intently at the creature in the photo, taking the photo as if she could crawl into it and eat the cat.

After a while of scrutiny, she admitted that this side was the head, with eyes, nose, and ears.

So she came to the conclusion: "This is a cat."

I nodded and took back the photo.

Li Haohao still wanted to take another look, reaching out to grab it, her two feet remembering not to cross the line, she lunged forward with her upper body.

I took a step back, and she crashed to the ground with a clatter, her fluffy hair spreading out like a bunch of seaweed.

I clipped the photo back into the log, locked the drawer, and Li Haohao still lay on the ground, as if sulking.

"I'm going to work now." I nudged Li Haohao's leg, she rolled over and tumbled out, I locked the door behind her. She knew not to disturb me while I was working and hurriedly ran back to the first floor.

While I worked, she mischievously roamed quietly on the first floor.

There were a total of four floors, and only the second floor where I worked had a view outside. Several rooms were equipped with custom-made glass, offering a panoramic display of the outside scenery.

The rain hasn't stopped yet, and the iron net outside occasionally sparks, probably some suicidal mutant insects hitting it.

This was my seventh year of work, the war had ended but not completely.

Occasionally, some aberrant creatures broke through the iron mesh to scavenge.

But today was rainy, so they wouldn't come. It was time for me to rest.

I may receive some communication signals, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and turned on the receiver, waiting in the endless crackle and rain.

Waiting for the survivors within a 500-mile radius to catch my signal and send out a call for help.

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