Chapter 3

It was past two in the morning when everything was done.

She washed her hands and picked me up. “Sorry, Blackie. I didn’t have time to give you a bath today. You still can’t sleep with us.”

I wasn’t exactly desperate to.

Back at the alley entrance, the old woman leaned against the wall. She must have been waiting a long time.

Xiaochi ran over and took her arm, her eyes full of distressed affection.

The old woman slept poorly. If she stayed up past her usual bedtime, she often lay awake until dawn.

But neither could persuade the other.

Xiaochi refused to pass up any chance to earn money. Her grandmother refused to let her walk alone through unsafe nights.

That was what happened when the weak supported each other. The road looked smoother, but was actually rougher.

Barely able to fend for themselves, and still choosing to tie a couple of lead weights to their feet.

Idiotic.

I rolled over inside the canvas bag.

Xiaochi freed one hand to scratch under my chin.

“Blackie, look! So many stars!”

“Cats don’t understand,” the old woman said.

Xiaochi puzzled over that for a moment, then smiled at me. “It’s okay if you don’t. You don’t have to understand everything.”

I’d never heard anything like it.

To me, ignorance was a sin.

The days passed quietly. Xiaochi still had no time to bathe Blackie, and those ill-intentioned scumbags still hadn’t shown up.

In the middle of my boredom, Mingling’s voice reached me through a spell.

“Zhuochen. Return at once.”

I had to make a trip to the underworld.

Xiaochi had no work today. She was in the courtyard sorting through the recyclables her grandmother had collected.

I picked up a black cord bracelet with a bell in my mouth and jumped onto her lap. “Meow, meow!”

The bell was my reward for ranking first in performance last year. There were two. If she wore one and I wore the other, mine would ring whenever she was in danger.

She picked up the bracelet. Her first impulse was to find its owner.

“…”

Cross-species communication really was difficult.

She looked both ways outside the gate, then crouched in front of me. “Blackie, where did you find this?”

I thought for a moment, then jumped into the bedroom and onto her grandmother’s quilt, hoping she’d understand.

Only then did she notice the bell around the cat’s neck. Understanding dawned. “Did Grandma give it to you?”

I couldn’t nod. All I could do was meow.

Luckily, she didn’t stop to wonder why a cat understood human speech.

She happily put on the bracelet. I cast a spell so that, once on, it couldn’t be taken off.

She shook her hand. “Why won’t it ring?”

If it rang, we’d have a problem.

Once everything was ready, I climbed the tree and leaped over the wall.

A few more steps, and I took human form amid black mist and headed for the underworld.