Translator: dapotaturs
Release Date: 03/17/2024
Edited Date: 06/21/2025
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“Meow~”
As Ning Xiaobei leaned against the door lost in thought, watching his grandmother’s receding figure in the alleyway, a sweet meow of a cat echoed from underfoot, followed by a fluffy little creature rubbing against his skinny ankle.
“Azi!”
Looking down at the orange ball of fur at his feet, Ning Xiaobei joyfully clapped his hands, bending down to pick it up.
The cat stared at its young master with a pair of brown, crystal-like eyes full of affection, and kept rubbing its head against Ning Xiaobei’s chin.
‘Azi’ was a small orange cat that his father had begged from the neighbors two blocks away. Old houses like theirs all had mice, so almost every household kept cats.
After their old cat ‘Xiao Mi’ died, there was a plague of mice in the house for a while. The camphorwood chest on the second floor with his grandmother was gnawed with a big hole, and her satin fabrics, stored for who knows how many years, were all chewed through. Desperate, she urged her son to go out and ask for a cat to protect the house.
When this little orange cat first came to their home, it was only the size of a palm and had just stopped nursing.
Interestingly, the night this kitten arrived at their home, the clustering sounds that had been circling around the rafters all disappeared. At that time, the cat didn’t even know how to walk properly. Grandma said that the ‘Lao Chong’1老虫 (Lao Chong = Old Bug)(mice)2In Shanghainese, “Lao Chong” means “mouse.” In the past, the elderly held a kind of inexplicable reverence for mice and avoided calling them by their actual name. Instead, they used euphemisms like “Lao Chong” (Old Bug),“Da Xiansheng” (Great Mister), or “Lao Xiansheng” (Old Mister) as a way to show respect or ward off bad luck. smelled the scent of the cat in the house and dared not cause trouble anymore.
Not to mention a few years later, Azi had become an expert in the mouse-catching industry, relying on its excellent skills to become unbeatable in the nearby alleys, becoming the little overlord among cats in the area.
At first, the cat inherited its predecessor’s name, called “Ami3 name derived from the meow sound “. Shortly after, when the TV started airing the animated series 《The Smurfs》, there was always an orange cat by the side of the antagonist Gargamel, named “Azrael”. That mischievous cartoon cat looked exactly like Ami, so Xiaobei gave this little orange cat a new and stylish name.
“This dream is just too good, even you appear in it,” Xiaobei said, holding the cat in his arms. He rubbed its soft, shiny fur from top to bottom with his left hand, making the little cat purr contentedly.
If dreaming of Grandma was understandable, then dreaming of the cat he had raised in childhood was truly astonishing to Xiaobei.
He remembered it was the summer of 2000.
Just as he and his father bid farewell to the old house and got on the moving truck to go to the new house, Azi, whom he held in his arms, suddenly screamed and jumped out of the car window, darting back to the already deserted and messy old alley.
He and his father immediately got out of the car and chased after it, searching for it for a long time but found nothing.
In the following week, he returned here several times, trying to find Azi among the ruins of bricks and tiles, but ultimately found nothing.
Later, bulldozers and excavators entered the alley, and it became a construction site with yellow lines drawn, and he could never go in again.
He remembered his father saying at the time, “They say ‘dogs are loyal, cats are treacherous’, they go wherever there is food, heartless and unfaithful.”
They didn’t know that cats are the most emotional, with the softest hearts, just like the fur on their bellies. Azi must have been unable to let go of the old house, unable to let go of Grandma, so it chose to stay in the old house, staying behind to guard Grandma’s spirit.
At that time, he cried with tears streaming down his face, and since then, he had never kept any pets. He was afraid of experiencing such heart-wrenching pain again.
“Azi, good kitty.”
Thinking of this, Ning Xiaobei’s nose tingled, and he let go of the cat in his arms.
Azi jumped down from his arms and landed lightly on the ground. It strolled to the cat bowl next to the stairs, took a few sips of water, and then went to sleep on the beam.
“It’s too strange, such a vivid dream…”
Ning Xiaobei walked into the living room, looked at the half-height mirror hanging diagonally on the wall, clenched his fist, and took a step forward.
In the mirror, a little boy wearing a blue and white sailor suit and dark blue shorts was staring blankly at Ning Xiaobei outside the mirror.
His eyes were narrow, with a slight tilt at the corners, and his light brown hair was soft and flat against his scalp, with subtle curls at the roots, his expression bewildered.
Ning Xiaobei was naturally curly-haired since birth. It was fine when he was young, but his curls became more pronounced after high school. If it weren’t for his consistently good grades and upright character, the teachers would have thought he was trying to follow the trend and perm his hair.
In addition to his curly hair, his skin was fair, his nose was straight and perky, and his lips were thin and red, delicate like a little girl’s. Ning Xiaobei remembered his childhood nickname in the alley – ‘Foreign Doll.’
The person in the mirror was not only delicate but also extremely thin, with slender arms and legs swinging under the oversized sailor suit, resembling Sanmao in the comic 《The Wandering Life of Sanmao》4
.”
The boy who had just entered puberty was growing rapidly, with all the nutrients seemingly going into his bones, as he hardly gained any flesh.
Ning Xiaobei remembered feeling hungry all the time during that year. Besides three meals a day, he also needed to have afternoon snacks, and the cookie box at home had to be replenished every few days.
During meals, his grandmother would sourly remark while watching him pile up bowl after bowl of rice, “You little glutton, eating like there’s no tomorrow.”
His father would laugh heartily at this and pat his head, saying, “Eat more, try to grow to 1.8m or 1.9m, join the basketball tea or volleyball team.”
But it turned out that eating more wouldn’t make him reach 1.8m.
His second growth spurt occurred during his first year of high school when he grew ten centimeters in half a semester, causing him growing pains. However, his final height settled at only 1.76m, without an extra centimeter.
“Oh, the adoption certificate…”
Ning Xiaobei suddenly remembered something, forgetting his growling stomach, and ran to the staircase.
He dashed to the second floor, looking around.
His father had opened all the windows on the second floor before going to work. The summer sunlight spilled onto the wooden floor, brightening up the room. He hadn’t paid much attention when he hurriedly came down from the attic earlier, but now he could carefully examine the layout.
This floor used to be where his grandmother lived, but after she turned 60 and complained of leg problems, she moved to the small room separated from the living room downstairs.
In the relatively spacious room, besides the bed, there was a whole row of cabinets, two single sofas, and a coffee table. Next to the coffee table stood a floor lamp with a dark green lampshade. On the coffee table, there was a bottle of Hero Ink5
a steel pen, and a stack of paper.
Ning Xiaobei remembered how his father always liked to write and work here at night. He used to think his dad was diligently studying, but a few years later, during a drinking session between father and son, Ning Jianguo confessed somewhat sheepishly that he was copying the lyrics of popular Hong Kong and Taiwan songs. Fortunately, he could show off the latest popular songs he had learned at the workshop…
Approaching closer, Ning Xiaobei lowered his head and indeed found it to be so.
— As you walk by my side, even though the road is far, I am not tired…
He was copying the lyrics of Teresa Teng’s 《Wandering the Road of Life6《漫步人生路)》https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhy8SCHl6gU》 because it was a Cantonese song, and his father had annotated the Cantonese pronunciation above each character.
Ning Xiaobei smiled knowingly.
He looked up and saw on the newly installed row of cabinets against the wall were two sets of glass cups for lathe work, various airplane and ship models, a Sanyo music player, and dozens of popular music cassette tapes.
Comrade Ning Jianguo had only two hobbies from youth to old age – assembling models and listening to music.
Oh, strictly speaking, there was one more.
Cooking.
Every evening when it was time to cook, anyone passing by their front door couldn’t help but stop and sniff.
Next to the brand-new cabinets were several old-fashioned redwood cupboards, relics from his grandmother’s dowry. The room downstairs was too small to accommodate these redwood furniture pieces, so they remained on the second floor.
Until the third grade, he always slept with his father, but later, Ning Jianguo saw him getting bigger bit by bit, and squeezing with his old man wasn’t quite comfortable anymore. So, they set up a camp bed in the attic and found a second-hand desk from the flea market to put up there, giving him his little corner.
The stairs leading to the attic were just behind the screen on the right.
He remembered how in the past when he stayed up late doing homework, his dad would often climb up and bring him freshly made dumplings and tangyuan7glutinous rice balls to eat.
Ning Xiaobei sniffed, walked over to the five-drawer cabinet against the wall, and looked at this cabinet, which was as tall as him and the color of crabapple flowers.
After two moves, this cabinet still followed them, carrying all of his dad’s documents and all of the Ning family’s secrets.
He moved the small stool used as a footrest in front of the sofa to the side of the five-drawer cabinet and stood on it. Then, taking a deep breath, he forcefully pulled open the top drawer— in the ‘real world’, it was in this drawer that he saw the unbelievable and chilling evidence.
However, the locked drawer didn’t budge.
But Ning Xiaobei wasn’t discouraged at all; he knew all the quirks of this five-drawer cabinet very well.
He jumped off the stool, pulled out the second drawer containing his dad’s daily clothes, and put it on the ground. Ning Xiaobei turned around, stretched his left hand into the empty slot from below, and with force, tapped the compartment board under the top drawer from bottom to top. At the same time, he pulled hard with his right hand, loosening the lock and revealing a corner of the drawer.
Standing on the small stool, Ning Xiaobei tiptoed to look inside at the neatly stacked various documents, account books, and even household appliance manuals.
Since there were too many things, Ning Xiaobei simply moved them all bit by bit to the coffee table.
Fortunately, Ning Jianguo’s habit of packing things up remained consistent, and the most important things were always at the bottom. Ning Xiaobei quickly dug out a leather folder.
Sitting on the sofa, taking a deep breath, Ning Xiaobei bypassed the white string sealing the bag, and it seemed as if he could hear his heartbeat.
He pushed all the other odds and ends to the other half of the coffee table and pulled out the Ning family’s household registration book… along with his birth certificate and adoption registration.
⟦Adoptive parent: Ning Jianguo.⟧
⟦Adopted person: Wu Baosen.⟧
⟦Adoptive parent changed the name of the adopted person to: Ning Xiaobei⟧
Looking at the faintly yellowed papers, Ning Xiaobei’s accumulated tears couldn’t help but fall down in large drops.
They say dreaming is to compensate for the shortcomings of the real world, to give people a chance to breathe when they least expect it, but why was his dream so painfully real?
In the real world, he was already in despair, why did his dream have to torture him like this?
“Is anyone home? Jianguo, is Xiaobei home?”
Suddenly, there was a knocking downstairs, sounding like a woman.
Ning Xiaobei wiped away the tears on his cheeks and loudly responded, “Yes, someone’s here, I’m coming.”
Unexpectedly, as soon as he stood up, his arm accidentally knocked over the bottle of Hero Ink submerged in a pile of documents. Ning Jianguo had just refilled the pen with ink last night, but perhaps he hadn’t tightened the bottle properly, and the blue-black ink spilled out all at once, splattering half the table.
Ning Xiaobei was frightened and quickly stabilized the bottle. With quick reflexes, he pulled out several documents near the bottle and grabbed the cloth lying on the sofa armrest to cover the ink, preventing it from spreading further.
However, despite his efforts, a few corners of the paper were stained with ink. And the adoption certificate, which was carelessly spread out on the coffee table, was heavily stained with ink.
“Oh no, what am I going to do?”
Holding the damaged certificate, Ning Xiaobei felt like crying but had no tears.
“Xiaobei, are you there? Xiaobei?”
The knocking downstairs grew louder and more urgent. Ning Xiaobei turned around in a panic, only to be surprised to find that at some point, the knocking had turned into the ringing of a cell phone.
How could there be a cell phone in this era?
Ning Xiaobei felt like the world was spinning, his head was pounding, and his body ached.
When he opened his eyes again, pale yellow light greeted him.
The smartphone, abandoned on the double fabric sofa by its owner, finally stopped ringing after countless cycles.
Ning Xiaobei propped himself up, one hand clutching his head, his expression bewildered.
He stared blankly at the living room he found himself in. Facing him was the Xiaomi TV he had bought just last year. On the left side of the dining table lay a pile of health supplements that his father had bought but never got the chance to consume.
On the right side, in the corridor leading to the balcony, a photo covered in a black veil was placed on a makeshift altar. Ning Jianguo’s black-and-white portrait smiled at him.
He realized he had slept on the floor at some point, explaining the soreness in his back and waist.
Ning Xiaobei blinked for a moment, then groaned as he got up, grabbing his phone that had sunk into the depths of the sofa.
There were over thirty missed calls, all from his colleagues… Checking his WeChat, he found over a dozen messages in his work group, all tagged with his name, each detailing various urgent issues.
“They won’t even let me off during a funeral?”
Ning Xiaobei sighed helplessly, glanced at the time on his phone, and decided to go to the office in the afternoon.
Last night, while sorting through his father’s belongings, he had found that adoption certificate. Shocked and pained, he had collapsed on the sofa, crying for half the night. He didn’t even remember how he ended up slipping to the floor or having that kind of dream…
Letting out a long sigh, he rose from the sofa, and a light piece of paper fluttered to his hand.
Ning Xiaobei glanced down, and wasn’t it the adoption certificate he had been clutching all night?
He chuckled bitterly, but his expression changed the next second.
On this paper… when did it get such a large ink stain? There wasn’t a blotch like this when he saw it yesterday!
………………
Author’s Note:
Yes, the protagonist of this story is time-traveling. But it’s more in the 1990s~~
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