Little Fatty Orange

In the dark and damp alley, the cobblestones were the same color as the faded, brownish buildings lining the path. The middle-aged researcher stumbled past trash cans reeking of rotting food, his strength to keep running gradually slipping away.

A painful, burning sensation seared his lungs. Clad only in his underwear, he exhaled thick clouds of white mist from his nose and mouth in the chilly night air. His bare soles were bloodied and raw from the gravel, and the pain and exhaustion he had ignored in his state of extreme terror now surged back like a tidal wave.

His oxygen-deprived brain began to grow muddled. He no longer had the heart to ponder whether this world was real or not; only a single thought remained in his mind: I am going to die.

Suddenly, his blurring vision caught a flash of light ahead. Then, he heard a few faint whistling sounds, followed by the thud of a heavy object hitting the ground behind him.

The exhausted researcher's groggy mind was jolted awake by this turn of events. He used his remaining strength to run a few more steps before collapsing weakly to the ground.

Propping himself up, the researcher leaned against the cold, damp wall of the alley and looked back. The rotting corpse that had been hounding his every step now had several large holes in it, lying limp and motionless on the ground.

The sound of pattering footsteps, the faint echoes in the quiet alley, and the splashing of water whenever the figure stepped into a puddle created an eerie atmosphere under the illumination of the red moon in the sky.

The researcher couldn't help but hold his breath, his heart—unable to calm down after the intense exertion—pounding violently within his chest.

The figure carried an oil lamp, casting a long shadow behind it. Looking down, the middle-aged researcher first saw a pair of old boots. However, they seemed a bit small, appearing to be about the size of those worn by a three-year-old child.

He gathered his courage and looked up, then stared at the tiny creature before him. Unable to mask the shock in his heart, he couldn't help but exclaim, "A cat... in boots?"

Wearing boots, holding an oil lamp in one paw and a metal rod in the other, the creature had a lit cigarette dangling from its mouth.

The little fellow, only a few dozen centimeters tall, flicked its tail, looking at the unclothed middle-aged man leaning against the wall with an expression of disdain.

Recovering from his shock, the man carefully observed the cat walking on its hind legs. He asked uncertainly, "Are you... Little Fatty Orange?"

Looking at the cat's round, chubby belly, the man was reminded of the orange tabby he kept in his office.

As he grew older, his relationship with his family had become increasingly distant. He spent most of his time on social engagements, and his relationships with lovers were more transactional than anything else.

In the end, it was this orange cat in his office that he felt closest to; he would often recount the troubles and pressures of his life to it.

However, he never expected that the cat would one day appear before him wearing boots and carrying an oil lamp, let alone save his life.

The middle-aged man's brain, previously muddled from hypoxia, began to function again. The changes he was encountering were simply too bizarre. As a researcher, his logic told him that all of this seemed fake.

Yet, the piercing pain in his soles, the distinct stench of rotting food at the tip of his nose, and the goosebumps rising on his skin from the cold air—

Every sensation in his body told him that this was undeniably real. In reality, there was no device capable of perfectly simulating the five human senses; brain-computer interfaces were still merely at a theoretical stage.

The orange cat before him suddenly spoke, and it was speaking in Mandarin. Its voice was soft, like that of a little boy, and its tone sounded somewhat impatient:

"Old man, get up quickly. Don't you know how dangerous it is outside at night? It's lucky I heard the noise and came over, or you'd be dead for sure. Those monsters that used to be humans wander around under the red moon at night, attacking every living thing. Even if you blow their bodies apart, it's useless; they'll revive in a short time."

Hearing this, the man stopped pondering the nature of reality and illusion. He dared not gamble on whether he would wake up from an illusion or truly die if caught by the monsters; the tactile sensations of his body were far too real.

He endured the pain in his feet and pulled himself up against the wall.

Looking back, the mangled, rotting corpse was indeed emitting a faint red glow under the moonlight. Its shattered body began to twitch and knit itself back together; perhaps it wouldn't be long before it stood up to continue the hunt.

The orange cat raised the metal rod in its right paw and aimed it at the monster. The tip of the small rod emitted a white light, which then fired like a bullet, blasting the writhing monster into smithereens once more.

Having experienced too much shock tonight, the man began to grow numb to these magical sights. Enduring the pain, he followed the orange cat through the labyrinthine dark alleys until they reached a main road. Ahead lay an old town emitting a faint white glow.

With its mottled brick walls, neglected sewage ditches, rusted electric vehicles by the roadside, and skyscrapers that looked like ghosts in the night, the man could still vaguely see the image of the bustling city from his memories within these scenes.

He followed the orange cat into the city and arrived at a secluded apartment. Just as the man sat on an old sofa and opened his mouth to ask a question, his smartwatch—the only thing he had on him besides his underwear—suddenly beeped. It projected a blue light, forming a string of text:

1. Survive the monster's pursuit

2. Follow Little Fatty Orange to a safe place

3. Understand this place

4. ????

5. ????

The man stared at the text on the watch, his brain beginning to race once more. Fear, crisis, physical pain, and this bizarre reality—everything served to inject new vitality into his previously numbing mind.

He asked the Little Fatty Orange sitting opposite him, smoking, "How are you here, and how did you fire that light projectile?"

Skipping over all the chaotic circumstances, he went straight to the core of the matter.

He did not yet have the ability to figure out what was going on, nor was he certain if this was an illusory world or if the world had truly undergone an unknown, cataclysmic change overnight.

Abandoning his wild thoughts, he decided to first focus on surviving in this strange world.

The orange cat opposite him rolled over on the old sofa upon hearing this. It tossed the metal rod onto the floor and said, "To be honest, I don't really know the specifics either. I've only been like this for a few months."

Little Fatty Orange began to recount its own experience.

Several months ago, after the man joined the academician's project and left the laboratory, Little Fatty Orange had been cared for by one of the man's students. Three days after the man left, the orange cat suddenly arrived in this city that emitted a white glow, and at the same time, it became able to understand human speech.

"I don't know how I got here either. I was sleeping in my bed, and when I opened my eyes, I was here."

"All the animals in this city have learned to talk—crows, cats, mice, sparrows, and those annoying dogs. But the insects are still as dumb as they used to be."

"According to them, they all woke up and found themselves in this city. The earliest ones have been here for over a dozen years."

"All the humans in the city turned into those rotting monsters. At first, they used gunpowder to blow them up, shot them with guns, and hacked them with knives, but it was completely useless."

"Later, a sparrow that particularly loved eating oranges was caught by a monster. It shouted, 'I want to eat an orange one more time!' Then, that white light erupted from its body, knocking the monster's hand away."

"Ever since then, the residents of the city have started chanting 'orange' morning and night. This white light accumulates; every resident can see an orange in front of them, with numbers on it."

"If you chant 'orange' a thousand times, you can fire a light projectile. Although it can't kill the monsters, it can temporarily immobilize them."

"Later, the city organized all the residents to chant 'orange' day and night, which formed the white glow outside this city. Those monsters disappear during the day, but as soon as the red moon comes out at night, they rush toward the city to attack living things. Only this white light can hold them back."

The experience of the orange cat was not complex, and at the same time, the middle-aged man learned the basic situation of this city.

Humans had turned into monsters, animals had gained intelligence, and oranges had become a lifeline; this was an absurd and eerie world.

The man's rational thinking constantly clashed with what he saw and heard, and after a moment of internal struggle, he spoke: "Orange."

As the word fell, a round, orange-colored icon appeared in the upper-left corner of his vision, topped with the Arabic numeral 1 in a slanted, bold, black font.

"Orange, orange, orange..."

The man began to chant frantically, and the number on the orange icon before his eyes jumped rapidly in sync with his words. After several minutes, the number reached one thousand, and then the black digits distorted and transformed into a white 1.

Seeing the man stop, Little Fatty Orange spoke up: "When the number is black, it can only form a light to protect yourself. When it turns white, you can fire it to attack monsters, or form the kind of large-scale protective barrier that covers the city."

The man asked with some confusion: "How do I fire it?"

"Just think about it," Little Fatty Orange replied, twitching its ears. It wasn't simple, just like flicking a tail.

Seeing the man frowning and deep in thought, Little Fatty Orange said with disdain: "Old guys are just slow-witted. I'll lend you my wand. Just imagine yourself as Harry Potter casting magic, and whoosh, it'll shoot right out."

Ever since it learned to think, Little Fatty Orange had scavenged many electronic products from the city's trash heaps, and quite a few solar-powered ones were still functional. It loved the Harry Potter movies most of all and usually carried a metal rod around to use as a wand.

The researcher helplessly picked up the metal rod from the floor, waved it in front of him, pointed it forward, and tried his best to imagine magic. A few seconds later, white light gathered on the metal rod, and a bolt of light shot out, sinking into the wall and vanishing.

Seeing that he was also capable of firing light bolts, the researcher's previously tense mood relaxed; he finally had the ability to protect his own life.

At the same time, the exhaustion from a night of fleeing washed over him, and he collapsed onto the sofa in a sleepy stupor, falling into a deep slumber.

Sitting opposite him, the orange cat looked at the snoring man and his protruding belly, pulled a long face, and muttered in a childish voice: "The old guy calls me Little Fatty, but he's a big fatty himself."

Dragging a tattered blanket from the corner with its claws and tossing it over the man, Little Fatty Orange wobbled back to its cat bed. It needed to sleep too; there was still "orange" chanting to do early tomorrow morning.