Pet King

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Knock! Knock, knock!

In the early morning, Zhang Zian was woken up by the faint sound of knocking. He yawned and sat up. Rubbing his eyes that were still sleep-ridden, he got down from the bed and walked to the window in confusion. He pulled up the curtains and saw Vladimir sitting outside, so he opened the window for it. After it jumped in, he closed the window lightly, trying not to disturb the other elfins that were still asleep.

It was not a ghost calling outside his door at midnight, but a cat knocking on his window in the early morning.

The last few days, Vladimir had frequently gone out at night and slept during the day. When Zhang Zian and the elfins wanted to sleep, it would go out by itself, then return in the early morning.

It opened its mouth widely and yawned. Its face was full of tiredness as it said, “God d*mn, I’m so tired. Time to hurry and sleep!”

“Why do you keep running out late at night? Is there anything that you cannot solve during the day?” After the morning wind blew at him through the window, Zhang Zian was slightly more awake.

After a few days of interacting with it, he knew that Vladimir actually did not need to eat. That showed that it was likely not a cat that existed in real life, and instead, it was just an imaginary elfin. Despite that, however, it still needed to sleep.

Vladimir did not care much and just laid on the mat. He answered in a way that did not actually answer Zhang Zian’s question. “Yeah, I’m almost done settling it. In the future, I’ll try to work during the day and sleep at night.”

Zhang Zian saw that it seemed to not want to say, or perhaps it felt that it was not the right time. It picked up a cloth and covered its body with it like a blanket.

Its fur had a lot of small stems and thorns on it every morning when it returned. It was like it had been running about the whole night with no feeling of exhaustion.

Actually, even if it didn’t say anything, Zhang Zian could roughly guess that it definitely went out and fought with the stray cats outside. It seemed to not have any realization that it was an elfin and did not think that it was better than the ordinary cat. If it met a stray cat on the road, it would always raise a front paw and automatically greet the other party. Even if they ignored it, it was not angry.

He sat next to the bed and took up his phone to look at the time. Even though it was slightly earlier than his normal wake up time, he was awake already. He probably would not be able to sleep even if he laid back down.

There were a few unread notifications on his phone. They had been sent over late the night before by the [Collapse The World], whom he had met on the forum. It seemed like they were also nocturnal.

[Collapse The World]: “Did you see the newest data from the crawler program? In the last two days, the capital had its first cat abuse case. It seems like the peace was only a probability-wise, occasional occurrence.”

Zhang Zian saw that Pi was still sleeping in the basket hammock chair, so he sat in front of the computer and opened the screen of the laptop.

After coming back from the capital, he had been running the Internet crawler program that [Collapse The World] had sent in the background. He had been searching for information on cat abuse cases around the country on the local forums in different countries. The computer was practically never closed, anyway, so it did not interfere with Pi’s writing.

He changed to the interface of the Internet crawler, and based on the occurrences of the cat abuse cases, he sorted it them lowest to highest. As expected, he saw a new record: The capital, which had never been on the list, had a new entry.

Opening the new entry, he quickly looked through the capital forum snapshots and saw that the cat abuse cases were around the same as other places.

It looked like as soon as Vladimir left the capital, the capital immediately fell into trouble.

[Collapse The World] had guessed wrong, but that was also good. It would save Zhang Zian the trouble of him being suspicious every day.

Zhang Zian replied: “My trip to the capital has yielded some results, and cat abuse cases may be over in the near future. If you want to ask the reason, it’s probably… The construction of socialist spiritual civilization has achieved periodic results.”

He sent the message over, and as to whether [Collapse The World] believed it or not, it had nothing to do with him.

“Meow! Zian, good morning!” Galaxy energetically whispered.

He also replied quietly, in order to prevent disturbing the other elfins’ rest.

He went downstairs and opened the shutter door, then started to clean up in preparation for the shop’s opening.

Not long after, Wang Qian, Li Kun, Lu Yiyun, and Jiang Feifei came in one by one, taking up the cleaning equipment and chatting as they did their daily activities.

Uncle Li and Aunt Li had opened up shop earlier than he had, so now the door of the snack bar already had a lot of people lined up outside of it.

“Mr Shop Manager, good morning!” Masanori Suzuhara held onto Snoopy’s leash and quickly ran past his shop.

“Good morning,” he replied, holding a broom.

Everything was normal.

“Store Manager Zhang! Store Manager Zhang! Are you here?”

Zhang Zian’s back was facing the door as he helped place the plastic bottles Wang Qian and Li Kun had spent the day before collecting into a plastic bag. He suddenly heard someone call him from behind; the voice was quite old, but it sounded familiar.

He turned to look. An electric bicycle was stopped at the door of the shop, and Electrician Wu hurriedly jumped off the vehicle and quickly rushed into the shop.

“Store Manager Zhang!” Electrician Wu’s throat and tongue were dry. He pulled on his arm, not able to say anything for a short while.

“What happened, Master Wu? Don’t be too flustered. Speak slowly, the sky won’t fall,” Zhang Zian signaled for Wang Qian to give Electrician Wu a cup of water in a disposable paper cup.

Electrician Wu gulped down the water in the cup quickly. He wiped his mouth and said, “Store Manager Zhang! You’re finally back! Where have you run off to these few days? I couldn’t find you at all!”

“Oh, I’ve been a bit busy. I was in the capital the last few days,” Zhang Zian explained. “Master Wu, why were you looking for me? Are you going to introduce me to someone? Is the girl pretty? Is it a worker in your factor? I can relax my criteria. If it’s not a fair-skinned, rich, and gorgeous girl it’s all right… as long as she’s either pretty or rich. After all, we know each other quite well, and I trust Master Wu’s judgment…”

Electrician Wu almost choked. He coughed a few times before regaining his breath. “Cough! Cough! This… I’ll make sure to keep a lookout for Store Manager Zhang next time––keep a look-out… Store Manager Zhang, you’re a fine-looking man, you still haven’t found a girlfriend yet?” Electrician Wu said awkwardly.

“Sigh, I must first have a person who can spot the long-distance running horse before I can find a long-distance running horse. Now the problem is that it is easy to find a long-distance running horse, but it is hard to find someone who can spot it…” Zhang Zian held his wrist and sighed.

“Master, why are you taking things to heart? Is it that the novels are not nice, or the game is not fun? Why must you find a girl?” Wang Qian came over to them. “Women are the most troublesome.”

“Ga ga! That’s right, men can still play with men,” Richard said, a hidden meaning to its words. “If you are really bored, how about finding a wrestling training camp to sign up for? You can be the next King Billy!”

“Leave! All of you leave!” Zhang Zian glared. He picked up a feather-duster and chased them all away before he turned to Electrician Wu and asked, “Master Wu, please don’t forget to do that… Right, what are you here for today?”

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