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There’s a white cat lounging in the middle of his bed.
Mo Ran rubs at his tired eyes once, twice, squints at the ball of fluff currently making biscuits on his dirty sheets. It had been a long, tedious week and he hadn’t been able to come back home in more than two days between trying to stay on top of his coursework for the upcoming semester and making sure his cousin, Xue Meng, settled in well after having recently moved. All he wants is to sprawl face-down and slip into a month long slumber but — a cat. He doesn’t have a cat. Did he have a cat?
“Hey there lil buddy,” he says. He pspsps at it for good measure but when he takes a step closer to the bed the cat stops rolling around and meows menacingly at him, hackles raised. Alright. Mo Ran doesn’t want to be shredded to ribbons by this tiny kitty and he figures that if it found its way in — nevermind that he lives at the top of a four story building — it can also find its way out.
He walks two steps to the living room of his cramped flat and sluggishly makes his way to the sofa; he’s asleep before his head can even hit the armrest.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
He wakes up to a pair of thin-slitted pupils boring a hole in his face.
“Fuck!” He rolls to the floor with a yell and slips into his best defense pose, balled up with his arms raised to cover his head; despite the blood-curling yowl the ball of fur that had been resting on his chest had let out at being jostled to the floor, no scratches come.
After a while, Mo Ran dares a peek at his surroundings. The world outside of his living room window is still silent, indicating early morning. It could be six, or seven. From the corner of his eyes, he sees a shadow move to swiftly jump on the low coffee table next to him. He blinks, slowly, sleep-sticky eyes focusing on the same white cat that had been on his bed earlier. “What.” He says. “Just — what.”
The cat meows and keeps staring at him, tail swishing and ears turned sideways, agitated.
“Why are you here?”
“Meow.”
“Do you have an owner?”
“Mroo.”
“Can you leave?”
“Mmre!”
Mo Ran sighs. “Are you hungry?”
The cat jumps on his legs with a resolute mrew! and Mo Ran startles so hard he bangs his knee on the coffee table. He brings a hand to his chest and closes his eyes. This is why I’m a dog person, he thinks.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
“Since when do you have a cat?” Xue Meng asks when he strolls into Mo Ran’s flat, sometime after 3pm with a Starbucks in hand.
Mo Ran glances at the kitty standing on the only free space left on his abysmally small kitchen countertop. He — Mo Ran had checked and almost got his eyes scratched out for his audacity — is looking all sorts of regal as he stares his cousin down with — is that contempt?? Mo Ran has no idea what’s happening, honestly. He looks back at Xue Meng with his eyebrows raised and shrugs.
“Maybe it’s your neighbour’s cat?” Xue Meng says. Ever since he’d laid his eyes on Mo Ran’s next door neighbor, Chu Wanning, he hasn’t been able to keep his name out his mouth, always Chu Wanning this, Chu Wanning that.
Mo Ran had been the same, before he’d gotten the cops called on him for ‘being a public nuisance’ and the door slammed on him twice because ‘it’s the middle of the night and you’re drunk, get help’. Well, damn, Mo Ran thinks, I was trying! What if he likes to drink sometimes and drop his keys down a manhole or two, he’s too young and hot to suffer this treatment.
Mo Ran scowls at the cat. “Are you Chu Wanning’s cat?”
It’s silence.
“Eh, he’s not,” Mo Ran concludes.
Xue Meng hums around his straw. “Well, does he have a name?”
“Xia Sini.”
“Scare me to death? I know your naming skills are bad, just tell me. Can’t be worse than when you named your dog ‘what the hell’.”
Mo Ran fixes him with a blank stare. “His name is Xia Sini.”
Truthfully he hadn’t thought of a name until now, but after he’d gotten his life threatened at least four times today, starting from this morning when he was woken up with a glare cold enough to freeze hell over, he thinks Xia Sini sounds like a good name. The kitty lets out a pleased mroo and licks his paw.
Xue Meng is unimpressed; he quickly changes topic and starts bitching about how he found out his old childhood frenemy Mei Hanxue has also enrolled at X University to pursue his studies and he has no idea whether he wants to throttle or gut him every time he sees him on campus — “Or kiss him,” Mo Ran helpfully provides. He narrowly avoids death.
After a while of pretending to listen to his cousin ramble on about his crush, he finds the cat — Xia Sini, he corrects himself, he’s got to get used to that — curled up next to his leg, peacefully asleep and content. He ventures a pet but cradles his hand to his chest as if burned when the tail that had been resting along Xia Sini’s side swishes in warning.
Okay, then.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
“What do you eat, usually?”
Mo Ran makes a face when the cat doesn’t answer and keeps pacing on the living room floor. He opens the nth can on tuna this week — his last one, he realizes with a rising sense of dread — and places it down on the floor.
“Xia Sini, you’re a really spoiled cat,” he says. “Are you sure you’re not Chu Wanning’s cat? I just know that man can only be kind to animals...” He trails off towards the end, a frown slowly forming on his face.
Mo Ran remembers when he first moved into this flat, his fresh-faced nineteen-year-old self full of apprehension but ready to start a new adventure. Isn’t that how most kids who move away from home for university are? Full of equal amounts of hope and dread, 50% anticipation and 50% homesickness. He’d cried a bunch in his pillow the night before leaving; he really thought he was even gonna miss Xue Meng’s annoying ass, he was so distraught.
When he first laid eyes on Chu Wanning, he looked really kind. It was just this aura he had, from the very beginning; Mo Ran thought he must’ve been so lucky, to have someone like that living close to him so far from home. He learnt quickly that Chu Wanning’s kindness was only reserved for the few stray kittens who roamed their shared terrace and — fuck it if he knows, the occasional bird, he guesses. Chu Wanning had never shown him kindness, not even once.
“You actually kinda look like him,” Mo Ran muses out loud.
Xia Sini paws at the half-empty can of tuna, turning it upside down, before skittering to Mo Ran’s bedroom and disappearing from his sight.
“That was the last one!” Mo Ran yells. “Do you even know how much tuna costs? Who are you to waste my tuna? In this economy??”
Xia Sini peeks at him from the bedroom door and hisses, and that’s that.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
Xia Sini starts behaving really weird — weirder than before, at least — sometime around the middle of his second week at Mo Ran’s flat, which is also when Mo Ran’s neighbor officially goes missing.
Xia Sini yowls like he’s being murdered one morning and keeps pacing back and forth in front of the entrance to Mo Ran’s flat; a few hours later, the police show up and Mo Ran spends an entire morning talking to them.
He misses an entire week of classes helping the landlord hang up fliers and two project deadlines because he finds that, despite everything, he’s actually... kind of worried sick over the whole situation.
It dawns on him as he’s hanging up one of the fliers, Chu Wanning’s face serious as ever and staring at him. If found, contact the police immediately. No other number listed. No relatives, no friends or colleagues had reached out. It took the world almost two whole weeks before anybody realised he’d disappeared, all because his rent was due.
“He was such a good man,” his landlord sighs. He’s a frail old man, kind to a fault and always has a smile to spare for Mo Ran whenever they meet. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, but his phrasing still unsettles Mo Ran a bit.
“Let’s not talk like he’s dead, uncle,” Mo Ran says, staring quietly at the tips of his shoes.
“Oh of course, of course,” the landlord frets. “You were close, weren’t you?”
“Not really,” Mo Ran says, not wasting any more words in correcting the other man’s tenses. He tugs down the collar of his shirt. It’s been really hot ever since august started, and he never quite learnt how to dress for the weather.
“He always asked after you,” the landlord continues, paying him no mind. “Paid for all the pairs of keys you lost and to make you new ones, too.” He laughs a bit as he shakes his head. “Strange man, but he meant well.”
“Weren’t those free?” Mo Ran asks, hating the way his voice trembles. He feels guilty, and naïve just for asking that. His feelings are confirmed when he gets a strange look in return instead of a proper reply.
They trudge along and plaster the missing person notices where they can in silence, a million thoughts swirling inside Mo Ran’s head.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
“Kitty, if you hate it here you should just say so.”
“Mree.”
“I know I’m never home and you’re tired of eating canned food all the time, but violence is never the answer.” Mo Ran holds out the mangled curtains he’d found laying in the middle of the living room when he came back home earlier. “This is not okay.”
“Mroo.”
“Yeah, you suck.” Xia Sini stares at him for so long that Mo Ran has to divert his gaze. He’s been housing and feeding this cat for almost a month and would venture as far as saying he’s officially adopted him, so why does it feel like Mo Ran is the one being owned here and not vice versa? Most importantly, why does he spend half of his time at home talking to a cat??
“I’m lonely,” he says. He sprawls on the floor face-down clutching the remains of his living room curtains; he must be painting a really sorry picture right now. Xia Sini circles him for a while, before jumping on his back and curling up there when Mo Ran makes it clear that his mental breakdown is ongoing and won’t be finished anytime soon.
On days like these, when he felt like the saddest, sorriest, loneliest loser on the planet, he would quietly listen to Chu Wanning pitter patter away in his own apartment, doing God knows what.
He’d never tell it to his neighbor’s face, knowing the most that would get him would be a sneer, but those moments made Mo Ran feel almost like he was back at his childhood home, hidden somewhere quiet and listening to Xue Meng run this way and that, his aunt laughing at whatever joke his uncle made. He’d listen to Chu Wanning go on about his business one thin wall away from him, until his tiny, cramped flat felt like home again.
Mo Ran looks at that same wall right now, hating the way he can’t hear a damn thing. “Do you think he’s okay?” He asks. I hope he is, he thinks but doesn’t say. I actually sort of miss him, he doesn’t even dare to think.
Xia Sini jumps on the floor in front of Mo Ran’s face with a quiet mroo and stares at him for a while. He must decide Mo Ran needs a giant hug because he suddenly flops on Mo Ran’s face, his belly soft on the skin of Mo Ran’s cheek and — he purrs. He starts purring really fucking loud. Mo Ran figures that Xia Sini already judges him so hard all the time, it won’t change a thing if he gives him yet another reason to do so.
He cries until his soul feel the tiniest bit healed.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
After the landlord told Mo Ran all of his replacement keys had been paid for by Chu Wanning, more and more people from his same building keep coming up to him to ask him how he’s doing and, when they’re met with Mo Ran's total puzzlement, they just proceed to shake his world foundations and kick at them until Mo Ran’s left laying face-down in a pile of dirt and guilt.
The pair of gloves he’d found chilling on his doorstep the day after he’d whined to his aunt that ‘it was so fucking cold here in Beijing in winter he was going to actually die’? Apparently they weren’t freebies for new residents — nevermind that Mo Ran had been living there for almost 6 months by then — but Chu Wanning had left them there! Same thing for the scarf, and the beanie, and the package of face masks along with the note with be careful of pollution! written on it in a really cute font. (“Just where did you think you were living that every resident got so many freebies?” Ning Yingying from 2B asks him. Mo Ran thinks it’s best not to say anything.)
What really drives the nail in his coffin is Shi Mei from 4C coming up to him to confess that the dumplings he gave Mo Ran when he was miserable and sick after his first exam week at X University weren’t made by him, they were made by Chu Wanning. Mo Ran had started harbouring a devastating crush on Shi Mei after that — devastating because Shi Mei never gave him the time of day and Mo Ran ended up accepting his defeat at some point. He lays on the floor for an entire day after that particular revelation, until Xue Meng threatens to kick his door down lest Mo Ran lets him in.
Xia Sini is suspiciously quiet through all of these exchanges but Mo Ran is so shocked he barely feels like a human at this point; he might have even forgotten to feed the kitty for the entire week he was forced to face the fact that he’s an oblivious mess, and an asshole on top of that.
All of this, coupled with the fact that he’s recently come to realize that he misses having Chu Wanning’s somewhat reassuring presence next door, is almost too much to bear.
“Xia Sini, I think… I might be losing my mind.”
“Mree.”
“Do you think I’m an asshole?”
Xia Sini does something not unlike a sneer, which is an amazing feat considering he’s a cat, and hides under the sofa. Mo Ran takes that as a yes.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
“Ge, I’m in love with your cat.”
Mo Ran just hums and keeps petting Xia Sini, who glances at Xue Meng for a fraction of a second before he resumes licking his paw. Mo Ran and his cousin have been sitting cross-legged doing coursework for the best part of an hour and Xia Sini hasn’t moved an inch from where he’s curled up on Mo Ran’s thigh. He’s become really affectionate with Mo Ran but will sooner die than be touched by anybody else; Mo Ran is not so secretly smug about it.
He’s been worrying himself into an early grave, lately, thinking about Chu Wanning and where he might be, and every time he ended up curled up somewhere Xia Sini would bump his soft, furry head into him and start purring really loudly. Why is it that everytime he bonds with anyone, he wonders, it’s through grief?
He’s startled out of his thoughts when Xia Sini hisses and skitters away. Mo Ran only catches a flash of Xue Meng’s guilty expression and retreating hand before his cousin goes sprawling backwards onto the floor.
“Don’t blame me if my cat scratches off your nose and uncle won’t pay for your rhinoplasty,” Mo Ran says.
“If Xia Sini scratches off my entire face, that’s my fault. He caught me slipping, that is on me.”
Mo Ran huffs out a laugh and tugs at Xue Meng’s arm until he’s sitting up straight once again. They work in silence for a while, until Xue Meng’s phone starts going off and it turns out to be his archenemy — soon to be boyfriend — Mei Hanxue. Mo Ran braces himself for an hour worth of bitching that never comes.
Instead, Xue Meng turns off his phone and stares at him. “I can feel you’re super sad, and it’s fucking with my vibes,” he says.
Mo Ran gapes at him but doesn’t deny it, opting to just ignore him and going back to his notes. Xue Meng uncrosses one leg to kick at his notebook, sending it flying across the floor. “What’s going on. Talk, or perish.”
Mo Ran chances a glance at the wall before he decides that staring at his hands is the best course of action.
Xue Meng reaches out with one hand, lays a comforting palm on Mo Ran’s knee and pushes and tugs at his jeans until Mo Ran’s swaying a bit in place; it’s enough to steal a smile from him. Xue Meng smiles a bit too, before sighing. “I’m sure he’s fine. Must be his midlife crisis, you know? Wasn’t his birthday like a month ago? What if he just took an impromptu vacation?”
“How do you even know his birthday?”
Xue Meng looks at Mo Ran like he’s a particularly slow-witted dog. “I asked… have you really never talked to him — like — at all??”
“I tried!” Mo Ran protests. “He just always looked at me like I was the worst fucking nuisance and if he prayed hard enough I might drop dead before I even said hi to h — ”
“That’s just his face,” Xue Meng interrupts him. “His beautiful, out of this world, ethereal, magazine cover-worthy face.” He puts up a finger before Mo Ran can even argue — not like he was going to. He wholeheartedly agrees. “You’ve had at least ten people come up to you and tell you he was the kindest human to ever walk this planet, he gave you gifts and food that you never even thanked him for, and you still think he hated you?”
Mo Ran cowers a bit and doesn't even bother explaining that he’d had no idea it was Chu Wanning who had been gifting him things until this week. “That does sound ridiculous when you say it like that…”
“Good, ridiculous is what you are. Stop moping.” Xue Meng must decide his vibes are restored, because he’s back to concentrating on his books immediately after he says that, leaving a pouty Mo Ran to crawl on all fours to retrieve his notes.
“I feel like I’m the only one taking this seriously,” Mo Ran says. His neighbor has gone missing! Why is it weird that he’s moping? Xue Meng doesn’t object and Mo Ran tries to get back into the right mindset to study; trust his cousin to slather his wounds in salt and then go back to minding his business.
“When did you say was his birthday?” Mo Ran asks after a while of trying to concentrate and failing.
“I didn’t,” Xue Meng replies. Then: “August 9th.”
Mo Ran jots the date down, feeling like there’s something he’s missing.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
Xia Sini falls off the bed with a pitiful yowl when Mo Ran suddenly shoots up on the mattress sometime around 4am. “9th of August, 9th of August…” Mo Ran stares at his phone calendar, feeling like he’s on the verge of having a revelation. Ever since Xue Meng had left, earlier that afternoon, the date hasn’t left his mind for a second. Then, suddenly — “Xia Sini, didn’t we meet on the 9th of August?”
Xia Sini starts to mree and mroo as he pit-a-pats in a circle on Mo Ran’s bed, looking almost — excited? He stops to stare at Mo Ran with his tail straight, it almost looks like he’s swelling towards him, expecting something. They keep staring at each other as Mo Ran thinks, and thinks some more.
He keeps thinking long enough that Xia Sini deflates a bit.
“... Well, that’s one hell of a coincidence,” Mo Ran says after a while, rubbing at his chin. He plops back down on the bed with a huff, still feeling like he’s missing something.
Xia Sini hisses at him and rains his tiny paws on his arm as if he’s angry, but he’s not using his nails so there’s no real damage being done; Mo Ran observes, puzzled, as Xia Sini jumps off the bed and leaves the room.
Weird cat.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
Half of the posters Mo Ran had hung up with the landlord have been ripped off. It’s actually illegal to hang up anything without a permit, the landlord explains to him after Mo Ran comes knocking down his door asking him if he knows what might have happened; he knew but wanted to do something for Chu Wanning either way. It fills Mo Ran with enough anger to fuel an entire army.
Chu Wanning’s been missing for more than two months by now, more time than any midlife crisis vacation could last for. Not that Mo Ran is an expert, he just keep getting stress headaches and wishing he could turn back time.
“I wish I could at least thank him, you know?” He says. “Just once.”
Xia Sini meows like he feels just as heart-broken as him and falls into his lap. Mo Ran cries quietly and it doesn’t feel half as cathartic as it used to feel when he still had some hope left in him. Hope is the most dangerous thing a person can have, he thinks. When you have too much of it and it runs out, you fall twice as hard than if you had none to begin with.
He didn’t realize how much he cared when he still had time to show it, had no idea of how much to be grateful for until it was too late. He feels like an ungrateful, wretched bastard. He feels like pure shit.
From tomorrow, he thinks, I will try to heal. For now, he allows himself to cry until every single bone in his body aches and his head hurts from dehydration. Xia Sini curls up next to his face and prods at his cheek with a gentle paw from time to time, as if he’s wiping at his tears. Mo Ran lands a wet kiss on the cat’s head, unthinkingly, just as he’s starting to doze off.
The last thing he remembers is a gentle glow illuminating the entire room.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
When Mo Ran wakes up, his eyes puffy and glued together by sleep and tears both, Xia Sini is gone.
Mo Ran pspsps all around the flat, looks under every single piece of furniture — not like he has many — and opens three cans of tuna, lines them up on the kitchen counter like an offering. He tugs at his hair until they’re standing in a bunch of different directions, starts crying again before he can even realize what exactly is going on in his head.
“This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening,” he repeats. He turns his entire flat upside down until it looks like he’s been robbed, calls Xue Meng ten times in a row and almost launches his phone across the room before he realizes he’s too broke to do crazy things like that.
He feels crazy, though. He feels like he’s lost his damn mind, he’s about to run outside in his underwear and knock on every single door of this cursed building and ask where the fuck did his neighbor and his fucking cat go. Is he next?? God, he hopes so.
He crouches down in the middle of the living room until someone knocks at his door. He has no idea how much time has passed, doesn’t bother putting on pants, or a shirt, or fixing his hair, or wiping the tear tracks off his cheeks.
When he opens the door —
“Good morning,” Chu Wanning says, looking worse for wear but just as gorgeous as Mo Ran remembers. Just as frowny, too.
Mo Ran faints.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
When he wakes up, it’s to Chu Wanning worriedly prodding at his shoulder.
Mo Ran shoots up so fast he almost knocks their foreheads together. “Sorry,” he says. “I mean, thank you. I mean — you? Where were you??” He grabs Chu Wanning’s face and holds on even tighter when Chu Wanning slaps at his wrists to stop him.
“I’ll explain,” Chu Wanning bites out, his cheeks squished together by a still shaken and overwhelmed Mo Ran. “If you let me go — ” Mo Ran relinquishes his hold, “ — and put on some pants,” Chu Wanning finishes.
Mo Ran remembers, all of a sudden, that he’d answered the door in his underwear and messy hair and God, he doesn’t even want to think about his face. “Yeah, of course, alright alright, no doubt no doubt no doubt…”
He shoots up and runs to his bedroom, leaving the door open and hoping Chu Wanning will make good on his words and come inside to explain why he disappeared and why he’s here now, instead of leaving.
When Mo Ran comes back after having dressed, brushed his hair and washed his face, Chu Wanning is sitting on his sofa like he belongs there. It feels very surreal.
Mo Ran clears his throat. “So…” he starts. He realizes he doesn’t even know what to say; it’s not like he and his neighbor had anything in common before Chu Wanning had up and left and Mo Ran had a whole existential crisis.
“You have a project due this week,” Chu Wanning says; his face betrays no particular emotion but Mo Ran hears the way his voice trembles a bit. “You really like cooking, but you always prepare too much and it ends up spoiling; there’s four containers of ma po tofu and stir-fry sitting in your fridge right now. You — ” he pauses to look briefly at Mo Ran’s bewildered expression. “You work too hard, you’re almost never home. You always leave your laundry until the very last minute so you end up wearing your shirts on both sides until they stink too much to be worn…”
Mo Ran smells his armpit as discreetly as he can, feeling a bit self-conscious. “How do you know…?” He stops to bring a hand up to his mouth, open in shock. “Have you been stalking me for two months?”
Chu Wanning sighs like having this conversation is a tax on his health. “Mo Ran, I never left.”
“Yeah, you must’ve been sitting outside my window this entire time, unless — ” Mo Ran turns this way and that, looks at every corner of his house that’s visible. “Where are the cameras?”
To think he was crying about this sicko last night! Mo Ran wants to go back in time and punch himself in the face. “Listen,” he sighs, burying his face in his hands. “There’s a lot of things I’ve been wanting to say to you and that’s really weird in itself because we have never talked much to begin with if at all and this is like really weird and I need to organize my thoughts and my cat disappeared this morning and I’m just really distraught so can we postpone this conversation until I know what the fuck is going on and —”
“Mroo?”
Mo Ran drops his hands. Xia Sini is sitting right where Chu Wanning had been until a moment ago. “What…”
“Mree.” Xia Sini jumps down and purrs all the way to Mo Ran, rubs against his legs as he walks past him. There’s a burst of light, barely noticeable; when Mo Ran turns, Chu Wanning’s face is a mere few centimeters from his. Mo Ran is too shell-shocked to utter a single word.
“Do you get it now?” Chu Wanning asks, low enough that Mo Ran’s ears strain to hear him but close enough that if he leaned in any further they’d be kissing; he’s so close that Mo Ran can count every single one of his eyelashes, can see the pretty blush sitting high on his cheeks. His heart does a funny little twirl in his chest.
“So you — and you know — and you heard — ” Mo Ran thinks about all of his weeping sessions and how Xia Sini had purred him back to happiness each time, thinks about all of the secrets he’d let out in front of the cat; Xia Sini had literally been witness to — and there’s no way of tip-toeing around it — Mo Ran realizing that he’s in love with Chu Wanning. He’s too mortified to say anything else.
Chu Wanning just nods.
“Why didn’t you turn back sooner?” Mo Ran asks. "Especially after you saw how worried I — everyone was." He spares a moment to think that he’s taking the fact that his neighbor is a shape-shifting cat remarkably well. All food for his soon to be booked therapy session. Lots to unpack.
Chu Wanning’s blush spreads so much it’s as if his entire face is on fire. “I couldn’t,” he says. “My family — there’s a curse — ” he stops and closes his eyes. Mo Ran thinks that whatever he has to say can’t be more mortifying that the fact that Mo Ran likes to belt Elva Hsiao hits under the shower. “On our 30th birthday, we turn into cats. In order to break the curse we — ”
Mo Ran huffs out a laugh. “Don’t tell me, the love of your life has to kiss you,” he jokes. His eyes widen when he’s met with silence. “No way. Who?”
Chu Wanning sighs, long-suffering, and takes a step back; Mo Ran’s arms come up to circle his waist and keep him from going too far. Suddenly, he remembers: the tiny peck he’d left on Xia Sini’s head before falling asleep last night. He’d never kissed the cat before, only pet him to his heart’s content. It takes him a while to connect all the dots.
“The love of your life… the love of your life? The love of your life.” Mo Ran repeats it so many times that Chu Wanning wacks him hard enough to make him yelp and loosen his hold.
“Forget it,” he bites out. He’s at the door faster than Mo Ran can grab him again.
“Wait,” Mo Ran pleads. “Waitwaitwait. Stop. I get it. I promise. I’m sorry. Fuck.”
Chu Wanning stands still and just stares at him, waiting for Mo Ran to reject him, probably, do anything at all. Mo Ran has never been good with words, he’s self-aware enough to know that if he tried to speak right now he’d land himself in an even bigger hole than the one he’d dug for himself in the last handful of minutes.
What he does is this: he walks towards Chu Wanning and cradles his jaw like it’s the most precious thing he’ll ever hold. He takes a moment just to admire him fully, now that he can, the gentle slope of his nose and his pretty phoenix eyes.
He thinks that he missed him so much and now he’s in his arms, thinks about how kind he is and how beautiful, thinks that they still have so much to talk about and that fuck, he’s embarrassed that it took him so long to realize that he loves him.
“If you don’t kiss me right now,” Chu Wanning says. He doesn’t add anything else, so Mo Ran just takes it as it is: a threat. He laughs and thumbs at Chu Wanning cheek, adoration written all over his face.
He leans in.
（Φ ﻌ Φ）
“I kinda miss having a cat,” Mo Ran says.
Chu Wanning hums from where he’s sitting cross-legged on Mo Ran’s bed.
“Can you be a cat for like… a couple of hours per day?” Mo Ran continues, circling the bed and sitting down on it to prod at Chu Wanning’s side, annoying as ever. “Please? Please please please? Please. I will beg eleven times.”
Chu Wanning fixes him with a withering glare, but he’s also blushing so Mo Ran doesn’t feel very threatened. “Then beg,” Chu Wanning says.
Mo Ran reaches the eleventh please and keeps going until he gets his face smushed into the bed sheets, his pleas turning into muffled gibberish. When he manages to free himself with a gasp, he quickly jumps on Chu Wanning and pins him to the mattress.
“How is it fair that my shape-shifter boyfriend won’t cuddle me in his cat form — not even in his human form now that I think about it. How are you so mean??”
Chu Wanning reddens even further at the word ‘boyfriend’ and yelps when Mo Ran bends down to rain a bunch of pecks on his face, from his forehead to the corner of his mouth.
“Come on,” Mo Ran whispers. “Just once is fine, don’t you love m — ” He’s blinded by a sudden burst of light before he can even finish his sentence, a smile already blooming on his face.
Chu Wanning sits stock-still in the middle of the bed with his tail straight, a tiny adorable ball of white fur. “... Mree.”
Mo Ran picks him up. “Yeah,” he says. “I love you, too.”