"I had no choice."
"I was just humoring the kid..."
"Ah."
"So, this leopard with a human face that the kid was talking about..."
After explaining a few things, Xie Chuchu immediately changed the subject.
"What exactly was it?"
She rubbed her chin.
"I think it was probably a cat?"
"But..."
"Are there cats that big?"
Xie Chuchu shook her head.
Besides, Xue Jiamin had said the leopard could wrap its tail around his stomach several times.
Did ordinary cats have tails that long?
"Could it have been a leopard that escaped from the zoo after all?"
Xie Chuchu thought it over from every angle and decided this was still the most plausible explanation.
As for the leopard with a human face the kid had described...
"...Maybe Xue Jiamin just saw it wrong?"
"A human face or whatever..."
"Maybe its markings just looked like one..."
Xie Chuchu gestured vaguely with her hands.
"A leopard with a human face..."
Chi Xiuke murmured.
She couldn't help looking at Master Xiao.
If what the child had said was true...
Then it definitely wasn't an ordinary creature.
"Should I look up whether any leopards escaped from the zoo near where Xue Jiamin lived that year?"
Xie Chuchu mused.
"But it really was a very intelligent leopard."
"It even saved a child..."
She'd heard of pets protecting their owners, and dolphins rescuing people...
But this was the first time she'd heard of a leopard saving someone.
But didn't that also make it likely that the leopard had escaped from the zoo?
Since it had been raised in a zoo,
it would have been used to people from a young age, and cared for by them, so it would be friendly toward humans...
So when it saw a child threatened by stray dogs, it