"At that time, I really did return to my body," the Dubian Cat took a sip of the colorful drink, "but I can choose to manifest within a hundred meters of my original body at random."
"Can you see the outside?" Xiaoquan Aonai stared at the cat’s glassy eyes.
"I can the moment I manifest; if I could keep seeing, I wouldn’t get so bored and be turned into a cat by God Kiyono."
Watching her obviously relieved expression, the Dubian Cat eyed her suspiciously:
"Respectable sixteen-year-old Little Koizumi, did you do something illegal with my body?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
"Suspicious." The Dubian Cat went back to sucking on the straw, but the straw slid to the side, and he steadied it with his paw.
Watching a cat do this, Kiyono Lin, who had been looking at Xiaoquan Aonai, couldn’t help but turn her attention to the cat.
She took out her phone and snapped a photo.
Staring at the picture, she pondered for a while and then set it as her wallpaper.
During this time, Xiaoquan Aonai took the opportunity to change the subject and asked about the baseball incident just now.
"What baseball?" the Dubian Cat mumbled, sipping the drink, looking incredibly cute with his round little face.
Xiaoquan Aonai couldn’t help but give him a poke with a hand—soft, squishy, and warm.
Dubian Che brushed her hand away with a paw: "Teacher, which baseball are you talking about?"
"It’s ..." Xiaoquan Aonai retold the recent events, "Where did the baseball go in the end?"
"Who knows, it might have gone to Capital City and fallen into the Uji River; or maybe it flew up into the sky and hit a plane flying from Hokkaido to Shanghai."
"Don’t be so dramatic," Xiaoquan Aonai said disapprovingly, feeling that Dubian Cat was teasing her.
It indeed wasn’t that exaggerated, but Dubian Cat still decided to keep an eye on the news, hoping it hadn’t hit someone.
In the time that followed, Kiyono Lin continued with the [Shinagawa Aquarium Dating Incident].
"...During exam period, Dubian Che confessed to Jiutiao Meijie in the courtyard in front of the whole school’s teachers and students."
"And then? What happened next?" Xiaoquan Aonai asked eagerly.
She seemed to no longer think of Jiutiao Meijie as a witch but was entirely captivated by the love story.
Kiyono Lin glanced at the cat sprawled out in big letters on the table: "You tell the rest."
Xiaoquan Aonai immediately looked over.
The Dubian Cat yawned, scratched his belly, and said in a perfunctory, emotionless voice:
"Jiutiao Meijie of Class 1-2, I like you. I swear to Goda High School, to Shibuya Station, to everyone, Meijie, I like you the most, most, most; please go out with me."
After he recited the lines like that, Xiaoquan Aonai felt completely unsatisfied.
But she could imagine the scene herself:
A handsome young man, standing in the courtyard in May, confessing to a girl in one of the classrooms.
"That’s so romantic; I hope one day a boy will confess to me like that," Xiaoquan Aonai said excitedly.
"Impossible, no hope, forget about it," the Dubian Cat stretched his legs and rolled around purring.
It was rare to become a cat, so naturally, he wanted to enjoy it fully.
Xiaoquan Aonai was about to argue, but then she recalled her already determined future and had no choice but to forcibly chug down her drink.
The buzzing vibration, Xiaoquan Aonai took out Dubian Che’s phone.
"Dubian?" Xiaoquan Aonai’s voice came through.
"What? Oh, is that Aonai? Where did you go?"
"I’m eating with Kiyono."
"Are you eating dinner later?"
Xiaoquan Aonai looked at Dubian Cat doing a one-handed handstand, the cat shook its tail.
"No," she said to Xiaoquan Aonai on the other end of the phone.
While photographing the Dubian Cat, Kiyono Lin casually asked:
"You and Mr. Xiaoquan seem to get along pretty well, even asking you to have dinner."
"Me and Mr. Xiaoquan..." the Dubian Cat began doing sit-ups, "have a pure teacher-student relationship."
Hearing this, Xiaoquan Aonai felt an unjustified discomfort.
"Let’s call it a day for now," she said languidly, stretching her body and then picking up her bag to leave her seat.
After walking a few steps, she turned back and asked the Dubian Cat: "Are you coming?"
"If you go, can I not go?" the Dubian Cat said helplessly, and then with a gentle leap, turned into particles of light in the air.
Watching the light spots circle around her, one by one entering her body, Xiaoquan Aonai’s mouth seemed to smile for a moment, but she quickly restrained it.
"Kiyono, goodbye. I’m going home with Dubian now," she said.
Kiyono Lin’s slender, fair fingers scrolled on her phone screen, admiring the recently taken photo of the Dubian Cat.
"Xiaoquan," she said, still looking at the photo, "it’s normal to like Dubian, but if you feel that the two of you are special because you’ve used his body, that’s a big mistake."
"What are you talking about? How could I possibly think that?"
Kiyono Lin zoomed in on a photo to examine Dubian Cat’s sparkling pupils:
"Dubian tends to be indifferent towards other girls, hardly interacting with them, but you are Xiaoquan Aonai, a teacher, and sometimes he might not keep the proper distance, seeming overly close."
She closed her phone with a satisfied look and put it back in her bag, then picked up her backpack.
"Kiyono, I’ve told you, I don’t like him," Xiaoquan Aonai said with a voice full of resignation.
Kiyono Lin walked in front of her, looking into her eyes, the outward appearance identical to Dubian Che, but the light within them and the emotions they carried were completely different.
"If you were the 25-year-old Mr. Xiaoquan, facing Dubian’s approach, you would be very clear about what it is and know what to do, but can you, at sixteen, tell the difference?"