Chapter Text
“Is that a cat?” remarks the front desk manager, peering out of Happy Internet Cafe’s front door.
“A cat?” echoes Chen Guo, devoted cat worshipper, immediately rushing over to stare out through the falling snow.
There’s a dark-colored bundle huddled under the eaves. Chen Guo squints, thinking it might just be trash - until it moves, shaking the snow off its furry back. But the heavy winter snow, falling in thick, wind-driven sheets, quickly begins to bury the cat again.
Chen Guo’s heart squeezes. The news forecasted a snowstorm tonight. Any unlucky animals left outside will probably freeze to death.
“Boss, I’m sure it will be fine,” reassures the front desk manager, already guessing Chen Guo’s thoughts from her stricken expression.
Chen Guo bites her lip, looking at the cat’s hunched back and flattened ears as it tries to huddle against the cafe’s wall for shelter. She thinks of Tang Rou, her prized purebred Siamese kitten, warm and safe upstairs in her room. And Chen Guo wonders - if she does nothing now, will she have to throw away a small, cold body tomorrow morning?
Glancing again at the poor cat, Chen Guo wavers. It isn’t good to have a half-frozen cat frightening off customers at her door, she reasons. She’ll just catch the cat, keep it inside tonight and let it go tomorrow morning. She can shut it in the spare storage room, Chen Guo convinces herself, already pushing open the cafe door.
Something dark and furry shoots through the narrow gap between her ankle and the door.
Chen Guo shrieks and jumps backward in surprise, whacking her elbow on the door. Nursing her sore limb, she searches frantically for the source of her misery, already suspecting the disaster about to unfold.
“Boss!” screams the front desk manager in terror, standing five steps away from her chair and pointing with one horrified finger at her desk. “It went under there!”
Chen Guo curses, stomping over to the front desk. Some of the customers are already drifting over, attracted by the screaming; she sends the front desk manager to handle them while she pulls the penlight from her keychain and shines it underneath the desk.
To prevent it from being stolen, the server computer tower is locked into a metal case that’s bolted to the floor under the front desk. But there’s a gap between the front desk’s side wall and the server box’s metal casing; when Chen Guo shines her light into this gap, something furry and dark flattens itself deeper into the space, light reflecting off the gleam of its golden eyes.
“You flea-ridden hairball,” Chen Guo curses the cat. She’d been about to rescue it, and this was how it repaid her? Shameless! Too shameless!
Over the next three hours, the cafe staff confirms that yes, the server computer tower is firmly bolted to the floor, yes, they’d require a sledgehammer to knock a hole into the front desk since it’s built directly into the floor, and a cat determined to stay in a dark hole will outlast an entire internet cafe determined to pry him out of it.
They try everything. When they attempt to lever him out with a broom handle, the cat braces its front paws and back feet on opposite walls, and wedges itself in the corner, as firmly stuck as old chewing gum.
Bribery is useless; the cat resists leftover dinner scraps, makeshift toys, and a bowl of water, without even a whisker tempted out of hiding. Sweet talking the cat is an even more miserable failure - Chen Guo gets the strange feeling the cat is amused by their attempts.
“Do you think he’s from across the street?” wonders the front desk manager, watching two grown adult men make kissy noises at a desk. There’s no sign of the cat.
“No! Of course not!” Chen Guo insists, slapping the desk with her hand and reflexively glancing outside at the glowing maple leaf sign that belongs to Excellent Era Cat Cafe. “If this was one of Excellent Era’s cats, their staff would be out looking for him. They wouldn’t rest until he was home safe!”
She crosses her arms. “Besides, he looked so thin and dirty. Excellent Era would never let one of their cats fall into such a state!” Chen Guo shakes her head, not a drop of doubt in her mind. “No, this is just some stray.”
The front desk manager nods frantically, well-accustomed to Chen Guo’s fanatical adoration of her favorite cafe cafe. Who hadn’t been forced by Chen Guo to watch videos of her favorite Excellent Era cats? The famous cat cafe that made animal cafes popular, home of Su Mucheng, the most beautiful cat on the internet, and Ye Qiu, fearless acrobat and performer of impossible physical feats - for a cat, anyway.
“I guess we have a new night manager,” jokes one of her employees during the shift change, before gulping and falling silent as Chen Guo glares.
“That cat is not staying in my internet cafe,” Chen Guo declares, hands on her hips.
The damn cat has decided he lives in Chen Guo’s internet cafe.
Nobody can catch him - and they try - so as much as Chen Guo wishes otherwise, she has to tolerate the skinny stray slinking through her domain and stealing food, like an oversized rat who’s infested her home and won’t leave. It only adds insult to injury that the cat is pure, spotless black, identical to Excellent Era's Ye Qiu, who Chen Guo is a fan of.
In truth, Chen Guo can hardly tell he’s there. The cat has a sixth sense for danger, and seems to know which humans are welcoming and safe, and which humans to avoid.
Chen Guo has been classified under ‘highly dangerous, avoid at all costs!’ Every now and then, she catches a glimpse of dark fur, but the cat bolts whenever she’s within twenty meters, weaving with insulting ease through the maze of cables, computers, and ankles, before disappearing without a trace.
To escape Chen Guo, on one memorable occasion the cat launches himself off the second story staircase into a crowd, lands on a patron’s head, and then leaps like an acrobat from shoulder to shoulder through the crowd until he’s out of her sight.
Chen Guo is absolutely not upset that the cat doesn’t like her. She doesn’t care at all that he’s letting the overnight gamers pet him, or that he naps near customers he favors!
No, she hates this stupid cat. Why should it matter if she caught him eating pork out of the repairman’s hand?
He’s a terrible nuisance! Unhygienic! Probably mangy and full of fleas! It’s not like Chen Guo adores anything kitty shaped and fluffy, or spent her childhood dreaming about having her own cat!
After the crowd jumping incident, Chen Guo gets desperate enough to set traps for the freeloading stray - humane ones, of course. She doesn’t want to hurt him, just get him out of her cafe!
The next morning, Chen Guo finds the traps she set the previous night empty, the bait stolen without the trap itself being triggered.
“How is he doing this,” she complains as she resets the traps.
“You know, boss,” ventures one of her employees. “We could...just let the cat stay?”
Chen Guo glares him into silence, and spends the entire day aggressively chasing the cat whenever she spots a single dark hair.
The traps quietly go back where they came from.
A litter box appears, hidden in the farthest, most distant corner of the cafe. Chen Guo shakes down her employees, but none of them confess.
“I didn’t put it there. We don’t actually need a litter box,” explains the night manager. “The cat is very polite. He takes himself outside to do his business.”
“How is he getting back in,” Chen Guo hisses, slamming her hands on the desk.
The night manager runs a hand over his face. “Honestly, I can’t figure out how he’s getting out.”
The litter box is not removed. If they can’t get rid of the cat, and someone wants to donate it for free, Chen Guo doesn’t want the cat fouling up her cafe anyway.
Mysteriously, the litter box keeps being cleaned.
“Shameless little beast,” Chen Guo curses when she catches the cat breaking into the garbage bins she’d ‘cat-proofed’ that very morning.
It’s not the first time her unwelcome guest has evaded doors, latches or locks he shouldn’t have been able to open; the cat is horribly, insanely clever, and defies physics on a regular basis.
Grinding her teeth, Chen Guo makes eye contact with that furry bastard so he knows that yes, she can see him and he’d better start running.
The cat looks her straight in the eye, and keeps eating leftover ramen out of the trash. He doesn’t even move until Chen Guo physically stomps over and shoos him away.
That’s what she gets for being considerate! Curse her love of cats! Weak, she was too weak! This cat is a demon in fuzzy feline form!
“Please give this to your cat!” the young student says in a rush, shoving a package into Chen Guo’s hands.
“What cat?” Chen Guo asks, suspicious how this customer knows about Tang Rou.
“The black one,” the student stutters, playing nervously with his fingers. “I thought I was going to have a panic attack before my exams, but he stayed with me all night while I studied. It helped a lot. So please give this to him?”
Chen Guo opens the package and finds a whole raw fish. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a flash of black. Turning her head, Chen Guo discovers the cat lounging on the floor, watching the proceedings with bored insouciance.
Chen Guo re-examines the raw fish in her hands. The smell is going to stick to her skin for hours.
She sighs, and shoves the fishy package back at the startled student. “Feed him yourself,” she bites out, and strides away, determined to ignore anything happening behind her. Whatever she didn’t see, didn’t happen.
When Chen Guo catches her employees sneaking in contraband cat food, she knows she’s lost.
“Cats aren’t supposed to eat ramen, boss,” explains the afternoon desk manager without the slightest hint of guilt.
Chen Guo sighs. She’s seen the cat drink out of a puddle of spilled soda. Frankly, she’s worried about that shameless feline’s diet too. Cats need meat, or they’ll get sick, and Happy Internet Cafe’s cat lives off scavenged garbage.
Holding her head in her hands, Chen Guo plunks herself down in the empty front desk chair next to the afternoon manager. “I have two cats now, don’t I?”
“Yes,” replies the afternoon manager, not unkindly, but with a clear undertone of laughter in her voice.
A self-satisfied ‘meow’ comes from beside Chen Guo’s elbow.
She turns her head. Of course it’s the cat, watching her with his golden eyes bright against his black fur.
Chen Guo jabs her finger at his nose. “You better not make me regret this.”
He blinks at her, then yawns.
She glares. “As one of my employees, I expect you to show up for your shift on time. If I see a single mouse, it’s back where you came from!”
Cocking his head to the side, the cat chirps, then slinks toward Chen Guo, lightly brushing against her arm.
Chen Guo melts, because the cat’s never trusted her enough to touch her before. “You’re unexpectedly reliable, huh?” she says, daring to stroke down his back.
His fur is dirty, but it feels like satin; Chen Guo adds ‘bathe cat’ on her to-do list next to ‘name cat’ and ‘take cat to vet.’ She strokes her new cat again, pressing down more firmly now that she knows he won't object, and feels every knob of his spine and every rib press against her palm. Frowning, Chen Guo revises her list so 'feed cat' sits at the top.
Under her petting, the cat gives a pleased ‘mrrrr’, then turns his head and coughs up a hairball, right next to Chen Guo’s elbow on her clean front desk.
She rears back in disgust. “You - you! You!” Chen Guo throws up her hands. “I take it back - you’re fired!”
To avoid Chen Guo’s flailing, the cat leaps off the front desk, looking back over his shoulder with a dead-eyed expression.
Chen Guo leans over the front desk, shouting after him. “You! Do you think you’re going to get away with that? Who do you think you are - Ye Qiu?”
As the cat flees, his meow sounds suspiciously like laughter.