You Still Pretending?

You Still Pretending? "..."

Xue Jing's expression turned somewhat strange.

Had Maomao never learned how ordinary cats meowed? What kind of cutesy act was that?

What were you pretending for? Xue Jing slid both hands under Maomao's front legs and lifted her up until they were eye to eye.

Maomao wore an innocent expression, just like an ordinary little kitten.

"..."

"You can speak human language, right?"

Xue Jing decided to be direct and have a proper talk with Maomao—what exactly she was, why she could talk, what the Platinum Tail Ring on her tail was, how to find more things like it, and why a miraculous talking cat like her had ended up nearly getting torn apart in the world of stray cats.

Yet Maomao merely wore an innocent look that said, "I have no idea what you're talking about," like an entirely ordinary cat with nothing special about her.

"Meow~~"

"Quit pretending. I heard everything. Speak properly."

"Meow?"

"As long as you open your mouth, name however much dried fish you want."

"Meow~"

Maomao licked her paw, completely unmoved.

Xue Jing raised a brow. "Still pretending?"

He placed Maomao on his lap, one hand pinning the back of her neck while the other reached toward the base of her tail.

This was one of the densest concentrations of nerves on a cat's body. Most cats loved being petted there so much that their lower backs would arch involuntarily.

Xue Jing's fingers moved nimbly, scratching relentlessly through the fur at the base of her tail. The little black cat's eyes instantly went wide.

"Meow!!!"

She let out a cry that was practically tragic. Her rear involuntarily lifted high, and her limbs began struggling, but Xue Jing had her neck firmly pinned down. Unable to move, she could only keep meowing nonstop.

After a while, Xue Jing stopped. By then, Maomao had long given up struggling. She lay sprawled across Xue Jing's thigh, limp all over, tongue hanging out, eyes rolled back, panting like she had been thoroughly played out.

Yet even after suffering such torture, she still had not spoken a single word from beginning to end, maintaining the act that she was just an ordinary little kitten.

It was enough to make Xue Jing lose confidence.

Could the Skill Panel's Divinity Drain have drained away her ability to speak human language? Had she really become an ordinary little kitten? If not for that utterly cutesy meow after she woke up, Xue Jing might really have believed it.

But there was honestly nothing Xue Jing could do about her.

If Maomao refused to talk openly with him and insisted on pretending, he could not exactly resort to torture and force her to speak.

He had just accepted a benefit from her. No matter how flexible Xue Jing's moral bottom line was, he could not do something like that.

Shaking his head, he said, "Fine, we'll leave it at that for now. Are you hungry?"

Maomao let out a weak "meow."

Xue Jing took that as a yes.

He placed Maomao on the sofa, then got up and went to the kitchen for a large bowl. Returning to the table, he opened the supermarket bag, took out the bag of cat food, tore it open, and poured it into the bowl.

After placing the bowl full of cat food in front of Maomao, Xue Jing had expected her, after suffering so much among the stray cats, to immediately dig in.

To his surprise, Maomao merely glanced at the cat food, clicked her tongue, and turned her head away without hesitation, refusing to even look at it again.

"Hm?"

Seeing this, Xue Jing suddenly had a thought.

That reaction... was not quite right.

It was not the reaction of a picky cat finding the food unpleasant. It was more like... the thing before her had never even been within the scope of her diet.

A flash of insight struck Xue Jing, and he suddenly understood.

He might have misunderstood from the very beginning.

He recalled what the cat had said earlier.

"I never thought... the world of stray cats... would be so cruel."

There were two possible implications hidden in those words.

The first was that she was a house cat who had never lived outside as a stray, so she was unfamiliar with the world of stray cats.

It was because he heard those words, considered that possibility, and saw that she was weak enough to be bullied by stray cats that Xue Jing had subconsciously assumed she was fundamentally a cat who had somehow learned to speak human language.

But there was another possibility... The reason she was unfamiliar with the world of stray cats, and the reason she could speak human language, was that she was not a cat at all. She was some creature capable of human speech that had taken on the form of a cat.

The most likely possibility was... a human.

Xue Jing narrowed his eyes. Without saying anything more, he turned and entered the kitchen to prepare dinner.

After he left the living room, Maomao, unaware that Xue Jing had deduced so much from one of her careless actions, immediately stood up from the sofa.

She jumped to the floor and padded silently to the corner between the living room and kitchen. Sneakily poking out half her head, she confirmed that Xue Jing was indeed cooking before finally letting out a breath of relief.

I didn't expect him to hear me talking earlier.

Maomao was troubled. Her tail twitched as she looked toward the ring near its tip.

GOD-1391: Cat Tail Ring... That bastard took so much money, yet he didn't explain this God Relic's exact effects clearly. Once I transformed, I couldn't transform back!

A very humanlike teeth-gritting expression appeared on Maomao's face.

After fuming helplessly for a while, Maomao gathered her thoughts and looked around the house.

This is a good place to hide. The security company won't imagine that I've become a cat and am hiding in an ordinary person's home.

Remembering how she had been chased down and bitten everywhere in the stray cats' territory, she shuddered.

I'll stay here until I get used to this God Relic and can transform back, then leave.

Maomao made her plans.

Still... to keep this kind-hearted boy from getting dragged into this, I'll just be an ordinary cat.

She knew that kind people willing to take home a strange talking cat would easily be dragged into danger if they communicated with her and became attached.

Therefore, she had to cut off that possibility from the start.

Without communication, there would be no deep entanglement. When the time came, she could simply leave and vanish without a trace, and they would never cross paths again.

He may have heard me speak, but that's fine. It was all just his imagination. I only need to make him think he's a cat-loving boy who likes cats so much that he's started hearing things!

As long as I refuse to admit it and stubbornly pretend to be an ordinary cat, no one can expose me!

Having made up her mind, Maomao nodded in satisfaction. Her tail stood straight up and swayed back and forth with delight.

Xue Jing busied himself in the kitchen for quite some time, making three simple home-cooked dishes: spicy stir-fried beef, bitter melon with eggs, and tomato pork soup.

You completed a dish. Cooking EXP +20

You completed a dish. Cooking EXP +21

You completed a dish. Cooking EXP +20

Cooking Lv.2 (318/500)

Xue Jing opened the refrigerator, took out the leftover rice from yesterday, filled two bowls, and heated them in the microwave. Once they were warm, he carried them all to the dining table.

Without saying anything, he picked up one bowl of rice and started eating.

Maomao, who had already been hungry for two days and had been planning to force herself to chew the cat food, stared blankly at the fragrant, appetizing dishes on the table.

The aroma became a little seductive hand that gripped her nose and drew her involuntarily toward the dining table. She did not even notice herself kicking over the bowl of cat food.

By the time she came back to her senses, she found that she was already sitting properly at the dining table, with the other bowl of white rice Xue Jing had served right in front of her.

She awkwardly turned her head and found the handsome boy shoveling rice into his mouth while watching her with a half-smile.

As if he were saying, Still pretending?

Please keep reading.