CHAPTER 3

I gave Li Haohao a piece of meat to eat.

I took out a can of luncheon meat, a full box. Li Haohao's eyes lit up with excitement. I poured it out and cut it into five slices, putting the other four back.

In front of her was a small, square piece. I cut it into small, fine pieces. Li Haohao was tempted by the aroma of the meat, and her ears kept twitching as if the scent reached out and tickled the tips of her ears.

Because it was meant to be eaten with rice, I solemnly served white rice and sprinkled the minced luncheon meat evenly over the grains.

I also found a box of multivitamin tablets. I didn't know if Li Haohao needed them, so I crushed one and dissolved it in water. It smelled like a bland orange juice with some sediment at the bottom.

Li Haohao was already captivated. She had never seen this combination of meat-infused rice and a beverage before.

I decided to add an extra dish. My appetite had been decreasing, and when planning for our supplies, it was fine to allocate an additional ten percent to Li Haohao.

I took out a small pack of pickled vegetables.

Before the war, no one would have cared about this palm-sized pack of pickled vegetables that came with takeout. It was quite difficult to find pickled vegetables that hadn't wilted—although they had long passed their expiration date, they had been frozen, so if I forced myself to eat them, it wouldn't be a problem.

To make Li Haohao appreciate the pickled vegetables even more, I finely chopped them into small pieces and poured a spoonful of tasteless nutrient liquid that she didn't like on top.

The kitchen at the outpost wasn't small, but due to the busy work in the past, there hadn't been an opportunity to set up a table and eat. There was only a tabletop hanging on the wall, which could accommodate two people at most.

Li Haohao and I squeezed tightly together.

Li Haohao was content, and when washing the utensils, she praised me, "You're so good, so amazing, so great, so powerful, so strong, so brave."

Sometimes, she couldn't quite distinguish which specific aspects she was praising. Once she was full and satisfied, she didn't hesitate to push all the vocabulary she had learned onto me, even though there was no one around to receive these praises. I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment.

So I taught her, "You can just say, 'You're so good to me.'"

"To me? Are there other people?" She was clever and immediately understood, "Are you not good to other people?"

"Not necessarily... Next time, be more specific in your gratitude."

"Thank you!" She understood my meaning, hugged my neck, and repeated, "You're so good to me!"

There was no need for that... It felt awkward to have my efforts praised so excessively.

Li Haohao leaned against me, and I allowed her to do so. On the first floor, there was a row of chairs with their backs against the wall, and protective suits hung on the wall. I sat against the wall, occasionally brushing against a pair of pant legs with the back of my head.

Li Haohao changed her position and rested her head on my leg. Suddenly, she asked, "Why am I called Li Haohao?"

"It means 'hello'."  [Hello is Ni hao in Chinese language]

Li Haohao naturally didn't know what the "n" and "l" confusion meant. After a moment of confusion, she accepted it naturally, not knowing what she was thinking, and said, "It means 'hello,' and it's also good, so I'm Li Haohao."

"That can also be said that way."

"Then I like this name." she said.

Li Haohao's name was given by me. She was indeed an intelligent being and quickly understood that these three sounds referred to her and could react accordingly. Now she began to interpret the meaning behind them.

Resting on my knee was quite heavy, so I absentmindedly patted her head. Her fluffy hair was more like that of a certain dog, which didn't quite match the softness of cat ears.

I didn't want to bring up dogs either, in case she became curious about what they looked like and ended up growing a dog tail someday. That would be quite troublesome.

Li Haohao quieted down, and I followed suit, enjoying the silence for a moment.

I took the initiate to open a topic, "Among the things I've given you to eat so far, what do you like the most?"

"Chicken." she said, never forgetting it.

"What's your second favorite?"

"Meat."

So I didn't ask further. If I piqued her appetite, I would be in trouble. We chatted casually for a while, and then I went to rest.

Li Haohao's resting room was on the first floor, which used to be the men's changing room. There was a long bench, a mirror, a coat rack, and a shoe stool.

Li Haohao liked looking in the mirror, so she voluntarily slept there. I placed a wooden board and a bedsheet on the bench, and she lay stiffly on it, making sure her ears wouldn't be pressed against the surface.

The lower half of the mirror reflected her silhouette intact. She was about 1.6 meters tall, furry, and the gold bead strings on her hands and feet were stacked together, like useless golden springs wrapped around her delicate limbs.

The rectangular mirror had a crack running through its middle, dividing it into multiple pieces. Each fragment revealed my eyes, with dark circles underneath.

I touched the edge of the mirror, and Li Haohao's gaze followed my finger upward. "There are several of you." she remarked.

"Mhm."

"But the lower half is one piece." She pointed to the relatively intact lower half of the mirror.

I covered up this topic with a blanket.

Li Haohao pulled the blanket over herself, closed her eyes, and stuffed cotton in her ears. She pretended to be relaxed and said, "Today, I won't go into your room, so don't lock the door, okay?"

Alright, she'll come to my room today. Got it.

She doesn't always have such a "criminal warning." At first, I didn't react because I locked the door every day. One night, I woke up and suddenly had a strange intuition that Li Haohao was outside the door. Although our door was tightly sealed, and her figure couldn't be seen from any corner, she was very quiet and made no sound. Still, I had a strong sense that Li Haohao was peering at me from behind the door in a strange posture. I was certain that the figure behind the door was not the same as the one I saw during the day. 

Even though I couldn't see in the darkness, it was as if she projected a blurry image directly into my mind. I just knew.

Since then, I stopped locking the door, allowing Li Haohao to come in and peek around freely. At least when she came in openly, she maintained her human appearance.

I lay on the bed, dozing off for a while, and then I heard movement. I had shallow sleep, and my mind woke up before my body, sensing Li Haohao's presence.

She walked in, not muffling the sound of the bead string on her ankles, but I could tell she was being cautious, tiptoeing and walking slowly, pushing the door open a crack and sticking her head in. With her hair tucked behind her head and tiptoeing, she walked towards my bed.

The layout of the single room consisted of a one-meter bed, slightly wider than the bunk beds in college, with a desk beside it, featuring one large drawer and three smaller ones, all lockable.

There was a glass of water on the desk, and above the drawer hung a desk lamp. In front of the desk was a regular chair.

Li Haohao sat on that chair, motionless, facing me.

While this may sound horrifying, for me, it had become the norm.

During the week when she had a long beard, she would reach out and touch my face and chin. During the incident with twelve fingers, she used her fingers as piano keys, playing on my body. I felt an endless number of fingers lightly touching me, like the legs of insects crawling.

What would she do as a cat?

She did nothing. I heard her faint sigh, as if she couldn't figure out what cats do. I closed my eyes and waited for her to lightly touch all the locked drawers and leave in disappointment. When I opened my eyes, she had left.

But Li Haohao came back, and I closed my eyes again.

That feeling that she wasn't human struck me once again, strong and intense. She wasn't human, it was a fact I had known from the beginning, but I had never seen her in her non-human form. My intuition told me not to open my eyes and look.

Something soft pressed against my palm.

Cat ears.

I resisted the urge to touch them, keeping my fingers stiff.

"Noisy." she seemed very distressed.

The feeling of her being non-human that lingered in my mind suddenly disappeared.

I pretended to be asleep, turned over, facing the wall, exposing my back to Li Haohao.

Li Haohao realized that she had made a sound, so she covered her mouth. I knew she was covering her mouth because she made a "hmm" sound, indicating she was exerting a lot of force.

Afterward, she left.

Early the next morning, as I was cooking porridge, Li Haohao behaved properly and didn't shout for meat.

"Did you go into my room?"

Li Haohao was surprised, "How did you know?"

"You didn't close the door."

A series of emotions, including annoyance, embarrassment, and guilt, appeared on her face. Finally, with cat ears perched on top, she revealed a guilty expression and tried to evade responsibility, saying, "I didn't go in, I just opened it to take a look. It's your fault for not locking the door."

"It's my fault?"

"Yeah, you didn't lock the door." She threw the pot back with a self-righteous air.

I noticed there was cotton stuffed in her cat ears. "Was it still noisy last night?"

"Yeah."

"Next time, don't grow ears. You can grow a belly instead and cut it off yourself to give me, so you don't have to ask me for meat every day."

If it were pre-war times, my words would be like those of a strict parent mistreating their child. Indeed, I had reached the age to have a teenager. If there were no war, perhaps I would be married with children. Now, I was doing the same thing—cooking breakfast for a child who babbled nonsense.

Li Haohao lay on the small table, "I can't control it."

"Oh."

Previously, I had a vague understanding that she could control what she grew.

I stirred the porridge, while Li Haohao lazily rested on the table, struggling to keep her eyes open until the cornmeal was finished. Then, she drooped her eyes and fell asleep.

"You said you wouldn't come into my room yesterday." I noticed she was very tired.

"It was too noisy," she said wearily, covering her ears, but the sound seemed to still bother her. "drip, drip, drop."

"It's raining outside, you know."

"Is it the sound of rain?" Li Haohao frowned. "What do cats usually do? What do they do when it rains? Do they hide?"

"Some cats are responsible for acting cute, so they just lazily live their lives. Some cats go catch mice."

Li Haohao lifted her head, thinking about the mice she had seen, and then lowered it again. "I'll be responsible for acting cute then."

That was fitting.

"But it's really noisy, not outside, but inside. It's noisy inside this house."

Disturbed, Li Haohao covered her ears, and I spooned some corn porridge into her mouth.

"I want to go outside, He Ran. I want to go outside. It's too noisy inside, I can't sleep." she suddenly called my name and surname, getting agitated, and slammed the empty bowl in front of me. "Let's go outside."

I said that outside there's corrosive acid rain. While protective clothing can withstand acid rain, it's not designed specifically for this type of rain and will reduce its lifespan...

But Li Haohao was about to cry. She held her head with her arms, covering her ears as well.

"Alright, let's go outside then."

When Li Haohao gets upset, she doesn't seem to realize that I would give in. After keeping her arms crossed for a while, she suddenly jumped three feet high. "I want to go south."

Heading south along the road, there's a vast wilderness where I found Li Haohao.

"Wait until afternoon, I still have some paperwork to do." I continued to swallow a mouthful of cornmeal, feeling the rough texture sliding down my throat. I could understand why Li Haohao didn't like eating this stuff.

"Then, we can't go too far."

"The car can't be corroded for too long either."

"Okay."

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