Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I didn’t understand.

I really didn’t understand.

Life had never been easy on me.

And yet my plain old orange tabby was wearing an 18K gold-plated chunky chain?

WHY?

Just as I was staring blankly at that gold-plated chain, my phone, which had been silent for ages, suddenly rang. The moment I picked up, a few clipped words came from the other end.

“Got a gig. You in?”

“In!”

On the other end was my childhood friend. She often did warm-up sets at bars or wedding events, pulling in at least twenty to thirty thousand a month, and she usually brought me along. It was just that lately, for some reason, business had been terrible.

“Damn it, have people just stopped getting married? Even getting married and then divorced would be fine!”

“What about bars?”

“No good either.”

She ranted to me over the phone for ages, then hinted obliquely, “Seriously, why don’t you just find someone and get married? How many more years can you keep playing the violin?”

“As many as I can, I guess.”

My casual answer made my childhood friend furious.

“You should be grateful you’re still young and still somewhat pretty. Otherwise, in a few years you won’t even be able to get warm-up gigs like these!”

Beep.

The call ended.

I instantly fell from heaven straight into the abyss.

Then I turned around and saw Director turning up his nose at the cheap cat food. Rage flared up in me. “You’re still being picky? Keep it up, and soon you won’t even have this to eat!”

Fat Orange meowed at me innocently, looking very well-behaved.

I knew I shouldn’t be taking my anger out on a cat, so I reached out and ruffled that lush fur a few times. “Sigh. If someone hadn’t stolen my money, your mom would be performing at the National Centre for the Performing Arts by now…”

I couldn’t think about it. The more I did, the more depressed I became.

After inhaling cat for a while, my mood gradually calmed down.

But the gold-plated flea collar buried in his fur grew more and more annoying the longer I looked at it. When I turned it to the spot right under the cat’s neck, I found a line of fancy English with an unclear meaning.

Domingo.

Domingo?

Not only that, just like what I’d done before, there was also a long, thin rolled-up strip of paper tied beneath the flea collar.

I carefully removed the paper and opened it with bated breath.

There was only one sentence on it.

“Sorry, but this cat can only be mine.”

No, seriously, what was with that painfully average-yet-overconfident tone?

I broke on the spot, grabbed a sticky note, and scribbled a line across it. “Excuse me, but I picked this cat up from a trash can. His medical bills alone cost me over eight hundred!”

After I finished writing, I rolled the sticky note into a long strip and tied it back onto the collar.

After that, when I looked at my cat again…

I had to admit that, paired with that gold-plated collar, he really did look dignified and aristocratic. Like a wealthy madam. At a glance, you could tell he was a cat above cats.

I got it.

This was meant to make me retreat in the face of difficulty!

For a moment, it was hard to tell whether the feeling in my heart was anger or jealousy. I was just about to throw away that crumpled piece of paper when something caught the corner of my eye and felt a little off.

I unfolded it and saw long, narrow, evenly spaced lines printed across the paper. It was manuscript paper, the kind I knew all too well.

Could the other person be a musician too?

As I was spacing out, a knock suddenly sounded from outside.

Hiss…

They found me that fast?