He sat back down and set the orange cat aside. Looking up, he caught Ruan Yu shifting her manuscript and materials over while sneaking sideways glances toward something near his side of the desk.

The cat was lying flat on its back, belly up, squirming this way and that.

Its fluffy little tail tip swept across the back of his hand in a ticklish swish — a minor but genuine impediment to official business.

He moved it a little further away, lowered his eyes, and opened the document. “A few questions—” He stopped again.

Because Ruan Yu didn’t appear to be listening at all. She was craning toward the corner of the screen, her upper body pitched forward at nearly sixty degrees, looking ready to come straight through it.

But the camera angle was what it was — lean any closer and she’d see nothing more than a single cat ear at best.

Xu Huaisong gave a quiet, deliberate cough.

She snapped back to attention and sat up straight. “Ah, Attorney Xu — please, go ahead.”

“You’re My Belated Happiness – Chapter fourteen, third paragraph.”

Ruan Yu turned to the relevant passage and found it was a description involving a cat — a scene where the female lead, passing by an art gallery, stumbles upon the male lead feeding stray cats in the bushes.

To add a touch of romantic color, she had adapted the scene from reality when writing it, setting it up so the male lead didn’t actually like cats at all — he had simply grown fond of them by extension of his feelings for her.

I don’t like cats. I like you. — This internal monologue was word-for-word identical to what “Xie Shiren” had written.

Faced with this particular parallel, Ruan Yu had racked her brain without finding any angle for rebuttal.

Seeing that Xu Huaisong was being entirely professional — showing no sign whatsoever of remembering anything — she felt comfortable enough to ask: “What are your thoughts on this?”

He gave a single nod. “There are subtle differences. The psychology you’ve built for your character is one of fondness by association, but theirs is not.”

“Hm?”

Ruan Yu blinked, picked up the other stack of pages, and read through the relevant scene twice before the realization hit her.

The male lead in the other writer’s version hadn’t come to like cats at all — he had calculated well in advance that the female lead would be passing the art gallery, and had deliberately staged the whole scene to win her favor.

It was just that “Xie Shiren” had described this truth in a very oblique way, and Ruan Yu, having formed her preconceptions early on, had become too close to the subject to see it clearly.

Come to think of it — though the outline was her original creation — objectively speaking, “Xie Shiren’s” adaptation had actually given the character more dramatic tension.

She added the annotation and filed the point away as grounds for counter-argument, then asked, “Anything else?”

“You’re My Belated Happiness – Chapter three, seventh paragraph.”

Ruan Yu flipped back to find it — a scene where the female lead rejects an unwanted admirer.

Because of her father’s connection, she had been something of a known figure in Xu Huaisong’s class back in school, which had once drawn the attention of a boy from class ten.

He was the kind who never applied himself to anything academic, and the girls in his class had dubbed him a “domineering CEO” type in the vein of Dao Ming Si — his juvenile antics were endless. On one occasion he had made a grand declaration in front of the entire class, announcing that she was his.

Unable to tolerate the harassment any longer, Ruan Yu had heard about it and — furious and flustered, and yes, pushed to tears — done her impression of a lioness. She had stationed herself outside the class-ten classroom and rejected him loudly in front of everyone, telling him to stop pestering her and let her study in peace. Her parting shot: “Dao Ming Si is so impressive, is he? Well, the one I like is Hua Zei Lei!”

The boy had stood there spinning like a top, utterly stunned, while all of class ten erupted in laughter.

The scene appeared to be a side plot, but it was not.

Because in Ruan Yu’s conception, aside from the male lead’s own personality, it was precisely this episode that had made him hold back from confessing to the female lead for so long.

He liked her, so he didn’t want to disturb her. — That was the reason Ruan Yu had invented for him.

She looked up. “What’s the issue here?”

She remembered this section had no problem with overlapping material — “Xie Shiren” hadn’t written a similar scene but had instead, after reading her detailed outline, taken a different direction entirely, extending the story so that the male lead took the female lead’s words to heart and began deliberately shaping himself in the image of Hua Zei Lei from that point forward.

Xu Huaisong blinked. “It doesn’t hold up to reason.”

“To reason?”

“The motivation isn’t convincing enough.”

“Then what other reason could he have for not confessing?”

Ruan Yu blurted it out — and then caught herself the moment the words were out. What was she doing, sitting here discussing how to write a novel with a lawyer? And had they not gotten entirely off topic?

Xu Huaisong lowered his gaze, expression unreadable, and absently reached for the temperature-controlled coffee at his side.

But he had forgotten about the cat. The very instant he picked up the cup, the little orange cat lunged a paw at it to stake its claim — the impact made his hand jerk, and coffee splashed all over its backside.

The cat let out a sharp, indignant MROW, and Ruan Yu let out an equally startled “Oh no!” at the same moment.

The subdued tension that had been hanging in the air dissolved at once. Xu Huaisong, rattled by the two voices overlapping in unison, barely had a moment to react before he heard Ruan Yu asking: “Is the coffee hot? Wipe it off quickly!”

He glanced down at the back of his own hand.

He’d been splashed too. Had she not noticed?

Xu Huaisong shot her a look, said “It’s not hot,” swiped a dry tissue across the back of his hand, then grabbed the loudly protesting cat and began dabbing at it.

Ruan Yu immediately stopped him. “Use a wet wipe! Dry tissue is too rough.”

He looked at her, then had no choice but to turn and rummage for a wet wipe instead.

Even after wiping it down, though, the cat’s bottom was still sticky.

Watching it refuse to lick itself clean, Ruan Yu asked, “How old is it? Is it old enough to be bathed?”

“Just over three months, I’d say.”

“Then give it a bath — we can pick up the case in a bit.”

Xu Huaisong suppressed a sigh, scooped up the cat, and headed for the door. Halfway there, he turned back. “How do you bathe one?”

“Isn’t it your cat?”

He shook his head.

Then whose was it, boarded here with him?

Ruan Yu came back to herself as he repeated the question: “How do you bathe it?”

How was she supposed to explain this? She thought for a moment. “Cat shampoo, absorbent towel, cat brush, hair dryer — do you have all of that?”

Xu Huaisong nodded.

“Oh, and Frontline.”

“Mm.”

“Alright, get those ready — you can use either a basin or the bathtub, water at thirty-five to forty degrees, and make sure to—”

Before she could finish, she watched Xu Huaisong set down the cat, walk toward the computer, and say “Hold on” — then pick up the laptop and carry it toward the bathroom.

The camera lurched and swayed.

Ruan Yu let out a silent oh my internally.

What on earth was this sudden first-person girlfriend perspective?

Xu Huaisong set the laptop on the bathroom counter and walked right back out without a word, leaving Ruan Yu on the other end going: “Hey, you—” Don’t just leave!

The camera was aimed directly at his wide-open shower stall. Could this be any more awkward?

After what felt like a long wait, Xu Huaisong finally returned, arms full of the cat and an assortment of supplies.

In the small space, the atmosphere shifted into something subtly peculiar — as if the thin barrier of the screen had vanished, and the two of them were somehow together in the same bathroom.

Ruan Yu cleared her throat. “Adjust the water temperature first.”

Xu Huaisong set the cat aside, pressed the temperature controls on the shower unit a few times, and detached the showerhead to test the water.

“Don’t use the showerhead to rinse directly — run the water into the basin, and don’t let it come up past the cat’s neck.” Ruan Yu watched his back as he crouched on the floor and continued guiding him.

Xu Huaisong followed each instruction as given, but the cat was barely past three months old and wasn’t accustomed to bathing yet — the moment it touched the water, it tried to leap out, splashing a scoopful of water in the process.

His shirt was quickly soaked through in patches.

“Hold its scruff with your left hand,” Ruan Yu said quickly, then added, “but don’t grip too hard.”

“Then what?” Xu Huaisong held up his now-free right hand and turned to ask.

“Wet all the fur below its neck, apply the shampoo, and work it in gently.”

He continued following her directions. When applying the shampoo, whether from his hand slipping or some other reason, his left hand loosened for a moment.

The result, predictably, was another round of squirming from the kitten — water splashed up onto his shirt again with a loud slosh.

Ruan Yu could almost make out the faint outline of his abdominal muscles through his now-soaked white shirt.

“…” She quickly looked away.

Xu Huaisong glanced at her, then turned back around. At an angle she couldn’t see, the corner of his mouth curved slightly upward. He focused on washing the cat, and only once the lather had been thoroughly rinsed clean did he say, “Done.”

Ruan Yu looked back, her gaze landing on the top of his head. “Wrap it in the absorbent towel first. When you use the hair dryer, use warm air — start with it held further away, set the airflow to the lowest setting, and don’t startle it.”

Xu Huaisong stood up, placed the cat on the bathroom counter, and turned on the hair dryer to get to work.

Due to the angle of the camera, his face wasn’t visible in the frame — only a pair of hands, knuckles defined and distinct.

Against the soft amber glow of the bathroom’s overhead light, the image of him gently tending to the little kitten seemed to be touched with a diffuse, gauzy warmth that left something tender and unguarded pooling in the chest.

Ruan Yu’s thoughts drifted, and in a haze she found herself transported back to somewhere long ago — the domed building of an art gallery, a patch of grass still fresh from the rain — where there had also been a cat just like this, and a pair of hands just like those.

The scene was like a long, unhurried take composed by a master filmmaker.

The natural passage of time layered emotion into the viewer without any effort at all — a wistful sense of all that had changed, a quiet ache for what was no longer the same, suddenly amplified and impossible to set aside.

The orange cat, well looked-after and content, let out a few soft, low rumbles. Ruan Yu came back to herself and noticed that its fur was nearly dry.

The cat was carried out. When Xu Huaisong returned, he pulled his shirt free from his trousers without any self-consciousness and began undoing the buttons — from the bottom upward.

Ruan Yu: ?

After three buttons, she caught up with what was happening and called out loudly, “Xu — Attorney Xu! I’m still here!”

Xu Huaisong paused, looked toward the screen, and said with perfect composure, “Oh. I forgot.”

Seeing the look of sheer mortification on her face, he added, “I need to shower.”

“Then move me — I mean, move the computer out!”

Xu Huaisong’s expression shifted to one of mild puzzlement. “You can’t close the video yourself?”

“…”

He had a point. Without even managing a proper goodbye, Ruan Yu clicked to end the call as fast as her fingers could move and sat at her computer, drinking water to recover from the shock.

A quarter of an hour later, a WeChat message came in.

Sisi: Senior, if you’re free, could we meet up now?

She stared at her phone screen, the intelligence that had taken a nosedive while talking to Xu Huaisong climbing sharply back to normal.

Wanting to meet so urgently out of nowhere — Cen Sisi had figured out she’d just been recorded, hadn’t she?

Xu Huaisong had also mentioned that this sort of thing never stayed hidden for long. The other party would generally work it out afterward — but the recording was already secured, so it hardly mattered.

Ruan Yu had no energy left to deal with her and replied directly: Not free. See you in court.

She sent it and blocked her immediately.

Barely two minutes later, a text message came flying in from a Cen Sisi who had evidently figured out exactly what had happened:

Using a dirty trick like that — aren’t you afraid your fans will find out? Fine then, let’s see who can play dirtier.