038 | (Thirty-seven) Stray Cats
In the quiet night, a single sentence amplified the slightest disturbance into a thunderclap, leaving her with a persistent ringing in her ears.
"You!" Xie Qingyan was so angry that her blood seemed to boil over, and her face turned pale. She jumped up and down, furious: "Do you even know how to write shame?"
He's such a shameless person, making such lewd and obscene remarks to her at the school where she's studying Confucian classics.
"I know," Su Xingmao replied earnestly. He seemed to take everything very seriously, completing each task meticulously. He turned his head, took one last look at her, stepped forward to straighten her hair, and on the web of his right hand, the crescent-shaped mark once left by his teeth was still visible after several years.
The wound has never healed since the day it was inflicted.
I'm telling the truth—
Xie Qingyan couldn't stand it, so she stepped forward and covered his mouth. Her ears were so red they looked like they were about to bleed. "Alright, alright, I know, just shut up."
Soft fingers covered her lips, and Su Xingmao indeed stopped talking. His warm breath felt like feathers brushing against her palm, causing a slight itch. Xie Qingyan quickly withdrew her hand and shook it in the air, shaking off the strange, tingling itch in her heart.
"Please, go to class." Xie Qingyan couldn't do anything with him. This guy could always say something shocking in a calm and even tone.
Su Xingmao gently urged her to study hard.
Xie Qingyan nodded perfunctorily, "Mhm." His ability to remain expressionless was something she could learn in three years.
The light flickered, focusing only on the boy's neck, where the slightly protruding Adam's apple, with its clearly defined bones, was clearly visible. Several red marks carved by fingernails were very noticeable, with thin, long blood vessels that disappeared into the blue and white school uniform.
A gust of wind rustled through the leaves.
Suddenly, Xie Qingyan panicked and quickly looked away. She wondered for no reason how long it would take for the teeth marks from back then to fade away, since they had been on his body for so long.
Xie Qingyan immediately stood on tiptoe, turned up his school uniform collar, and stared wide-eyed at him with misty, dark blue eyes, looking like a Persian cat whose tail had been stepped on and whose fur had stood on end. He threatened in a fierce tone, thinking he was being intimidating: "Don't let anyone see us, understand?"
Su Xingmao held his breath, his eyelashes drooping, letting his collar be grabbed.
Staring at him like that, Su Xingmao's heart rate soared.
His body tensed suddenly, his blood boiled in his skin, and a burning sensation rose in his abdomen. Something became uncontrollable, and he took a step back.
"Mmm," she replied softly.
However, as soon as Su Xingmao returned to the classroom, his sharp-eyed classmates noticed a few red marks on his collar, which were particularly eye-catching and hard to ignore.
"Hey, class monitor, what's that around your neck?"
"I just fed a cat," Su Xingmao replied calmly and indifferently.
"There are cats at school? Where are they? I really want to have a cat, but my mom is allergic to cat fur." The classmate kept asking, "I want to go feed them too."
"Don't go," Su Xingmao stopped him.
"Why?" the student asked, puzzled.
"It's fierce and will scratch people." He paused slightly, recalling some old scenes, and looked down at the faint teeth marks on the tiger's mouth that had not faded over the years. He added in a low voice, "It will also bite people."
“Okay then…” the classmate shrugged regretfully, “I love kittens.”
kitten.
Very popular.
Su Xingmao sat down, took out his notebook, and wrote formulas on the draft paper. His mind wandered, and somehow the formulas turned into names. He lowered his eyes, tore off a page, walked to the trash can, and held the draft paper in his palm. He hesitated for a long time but still didn't throw it away.
He stared at the teeth marks, raised his hand, and slowly stroked them with his fingertips, as if he could touch those two petals again through the scar, his rosy, tender lips, feeling the teeth dig into his flesh like needles pricking him, insects crawling under his skin, a hidden... unbearable pain.
I'd heard before that rheumatism could cause unbearable itching in wounds, making them linger for years. Why did her gaze feel the same? Did she perhaps send a shower down her spine onto his palm?
He returned to his desk, frowned for a long time, smoothed out the creases in the paper, and tucked it into a page of a book.
Rumors about several stray cats in the school garden were spreading rapidly throughout the school.
When the news reached Xie Qingyan's ears, several people were discussing catching the cat, muttering, "It's a stray cat, it might have some kind of disease. Even the class monitor got caught."
How dare they spread rumors about her?
Xie Qingyan awkwardly turned her head away and loudly questioned who was talking nonsense.
The class representative for Chinese, Zhou Jianyang, chuckled and teased, "What's it to you, Xie Qingyan? Why are you getting so worked up?"
"How can it not concern me?" Xie Qingyan said firmly, "So what if there are stray cats? The school is so big, it's just one cat, why make such a fuss, like something terrible has happened?"
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