Beep beep.
Lu Yiyun was woken up by her alarm. She reached out her hand to turn it off.
Five minutes later, her phone buzzed again.
Ding ding.
She was woken up by the phone alarm again.
It could not be turned off this time. In order not to oversleep in the morning, she had placed the phone on the table before bedtime. She could not turn off the phone alarm from bed, unless her arms were two meters long.
She rubbed her eyes, groped near the pillow for her glasses, and put them on. Jasmine was lying on her blanket, and was woken up by her movements. It jumped off the bed, meowed to say good morning, and then went to its bowl to drink water by itself.
“Good morning, Jasmine,” she said after yawning.
She got dressed, got up, washed herself, and poured a bowl of cereal. The same repetitive movements had formed a routine for her, which she was able to pull off without using her brain. She sat down at the table—which was also her desk—and scooped cereal into her mouth, her brain gradually waking up.
Jasmine was eating breakfast at her feet. In terms of food expense, Jasmine’s food was much more costly than hers.
Unlike most girls her age, she skipped the makeup routine before going out; it seemed to be one step that she skipped. In fact, she saved one hour, as she could also skip the makeup removal routine when she returned home.
One hour saved each day totaled 15 days saved in a year.
Suppose that she lived 75 years––if she learned to apply makeup at 15, and stopped it at 75 as it was no longer necessary, she could save two and a half years within 60 years. That was an awful amount of time.
The thought of spending two and a half years of her life applying makeup to her face caused an urge for her to speak to her face. “Thank you for the hard work!” she exclaimed.
She could do a lot of things during this one hour, such as painting.
She was used to painting in the pet shop now, instead of staying at home and working behind closed doors. Another reason was that, since the hero of her comics was based on Zhang Zian, it would be easier when she was drawing a brawny guy to do so next to the prototype.
She finished breakfast with Jasmine and cleaned both of their bowls. She put Jasmine into her backpack, as usual, then grabbed her graphic tablet and headed towards the pet shop one block away.
She went outside at same time as her next door neighbor. They both looked familiar to each other. She made an effort to open her mouth and say, “Good morning,” but she could not utter the words because of her shyness. She lowered her head and covered her eyes with the hair on her forehead.
The neighbor did the same thing, and pretended to not have seen her with embarrassment.
All neighborhood relationships in modern society were more or less like this.
The apartments in the old, residential area did not have the best layout, which made them small, low, damp, and dark. Most tenants were poor, but this was fine in a way, as nobody looked down upon each other.
In fact, with the money she was making through painting and working, she could afford a better apartment, but there was no need to waste money—an apartment was only a place to sleep, anyway.
As she left the gate of her residential area, a nice smell of breakfast food came from Li’s Supreme Snack Bar for Cat Fanciers.
“Good morning,” three voices greeted her.
She tilted her head to look. It was Ting Ting and Xiao Zhuang. They had been volunteering at the snack bar every day for over half a month now. As long as they could persist another ten days or so, they would succeed.
Ting Ting and Xiao Zhuang were talking to Sun Xiaomeng outside the snack bar. Maybe Sun Xiaomeng was evaluating how serious they were about adoption.
Sun Xiaomeng looked tired, with dark circles around her eyes. It appeared as though she hadn’t slept well the night before.
“Good morning,” Lu Yiyun responded with a low voice.
She continued to walk in order to not interrupt their conversation. She looked around for the traffic, then ran across the street.
The shutter door of the pet shop was not open. Normally it would have been open at the hour she arrived.
She took out the key from her pocket, unlocked the door, then pushed the shutter door up with quite a bit of effort.
She pulled open the glass door and everything looked normal in the pet shop, except that it was quieter than usual. That noisy grey parrot was absent—it was apparently staying at a friend’s place, along with the cats and dogs, while Zhang Zian was abroad. That friend was very fond of them. He didn’t specify which friend it was, but she didn’t ask, either.
She took Jasmine out of her backpack so that it could play freely in the shop. She then cleaned up the cash register thoroughly, which mainly included wiping the dust off from the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, POS machine, and the receipt printer. After she finished, she sat down at the cashier’s seat and connected the graphic tablet to start drawing.
She wanted to wait for Wang Qian and Li Kun to begin cleaning the shop so they could all do it together. They usually came later, as they always stayed up late playing online games.
She had only posted one or two episodes of the comic series on Weibo, but they were received quite well—even better than her previous series. She planned to sketch the draft of the third episode.
She made a few sloppy sketches, then erased them. She made a few more sketches and erased them again.
For some reason, she had a strange feeling and could not concentrate on the painting. She had never felt like this before, as if something was missing… was it because the shop was too quiet? The last time Zhang Zian went to the United States, the shop was just as quiet and it didn’t bother with her painting.
She lifted her head and glanced around the shop slowly.
The frolicking kittens, the cat tree, the display cabinets, the puppies in the display cabinets, the shelf were all still there…
After glancing around, she suddenly found out the abnormality and was astonished. The Holy Cat statue sitting across the cash register was gone.
She thought that she was sleeping and quietly pinched herself. It did hurt, and the Holy Cat statue was still gone.
What happened? It was there yesterday when I left work.
She started panicking in her heart. Was there a burglar in the shop? The shutter door was locked tight and there was no sign of forced entry. The small amount of money was still inside the cashier drawer. There was not much, but it was a few hundred RMB in total. What kind of burglar would break in without stealing the money, but would steal a heavy, bronze statue? Wasn’t there something wrong with the burglar?
It would make sense if the statue was an artifact or antique, but she heard it clearly from Zhang Zian that it was only a replica and wasn’t worth much money.
Did Wang Qian and Li Kun hide the statue as a prank? No. They thought that she was too dull to play a prank on. They had never pranked her.
Besides, there was only one key to the shutter door, and she was the last one to leave yesterday. Wang Qian and Li Kun had no chance to hide the statue under her eyes.
Her hearting starting pounding. She left the cashier and ran to where the statue was placed, then bent down to observe carefully.
There was a pale white mark on the ground—a different color than the rest of the floor. It proved that the statue had been there for a long time, but was now gone.
The statue was made with bronze and was very heavy. It was so heavy that nobody wanted to move it while cleaning the floor.
The first time she saw the Holy Cat statue, she felt that the shape was weird and the color was dark, but it was fine after getting used to it. Many customers in the shop were also interested in the statue and even asked if it was for sale. Zhang Zian declined by telling them that the statue was a gift when his shop opened and it was not appropriate to sell it; however, Lu Yiyun felt the actual reason was that the offered price was not high enough for him…
Lu Yiyun remembered that this statue was the opening gift from Snowy. How about asking Snowy where she bought it, and if there were more of them available?
Lu Yiyun wanted to pay with her own money, buy the same statue, and place it back while pretending that nothing ever happened. The Holy Cat statue went missing during her watch, and she didn’t want Zhang Zian, or others, to think that she was the thief. She didn’t have much money, but she never stole anything. Moreover, she didn’t want to be suspected as a thief.
She took out her phone and retrieved Snowy’s Wechat ID. After careful consideration, she sent a message. Good morning, Snowy. Do you remember where you bought the Holy Cat statue in the shop?
This was her first message to Snowy since they had added each other on WeChat.
After clicking “send,” she held the phone tight in her hand and waited with a distraught mind.
It was so early. When did Snowy get up? She had heard that all live broadcast hosts were night owls…
It didn’t take long before she received Snowy’s reply. It was a voice message.
After clicking on the message, Snowy’s voice was heard from the phone speaker with a hint of laziness. It seemed as though she had just woken up.
“Good morning, Yiyun. The Holy Cat statue, let me think… oh, I remember it. I bought it from a thrift shop called ‘Back to the Old Days.’ Right, that was it… I’m coming! Coming down in a minute!”
She could almost hear Snowy’s mother calling her to eat downstairs in the voice message. The sound was quite distant. It seemed that Snowy was living with her parents in a pretty big house.
Before she had time to think further, Lu Yiyun typed again. How much was it?
Snowy sent another voice message: “How much… I don’t remember. Maybe a few thousand?”
A few thousand RMB was fine, as Lu Yiyun could afford it. She was slightly relieved, and typed again. Was there only one Holy Cat statue in the shop? Was there a second one?
Snowy replied, “Not really, no. There was only one in the shop, not a second one. I remember the boss was a charismatic old man. He didn’t sell it at full price, but kind of offered it as a gift. He also said something like this holy object was psychic, and his little shop could not hold it… It’s been a long time, and I can’t remember it all.”
While Snowy was recording the voice message, her mother called for her again to come downstairs for food. She responded impatiently.
Lu Yiyun looked very disappointed after hearing that there was only one statue like this.
Snowy said, “Yiyun, why are you suddenly asking about this? Did anything happen?”
Lu Yiyun answered. Nothing. I just suddenly thought of it out of the blue. Snowy, go for breakfast now. Don’t let your mom wait for too long.
Snowy said, “Hum, I’m getting up… Snowball, get off. Don’t stay on top of my blanket… Right, Yiyun, is Mr. Store Manager out of the country? Is everything all right at the shop?”
Lu Yiyun replied, Everything is fine. Don’t worry, Snowy.
Snowy said, “That’s great. I’m going for breakfast now!”
Lu Yiyun sighed. There was no other option now. As there was no way to replace it, she had to tell Zhang Zian the truth and hoped that he would not treat her as a thief.
She retrieved Zhang Zian’s Wechat ID. After careful consideration, she sent him a message. I’m sorry, Mr. Store Manager. The Holy Cat statue in the shop is missing…