Hot Fox, Steamy Cat, Cool Bunny

Rongcheng was peaceful and tranquil today.

And hot. Really hot.

Busy, harried people sweated their way through the city, while vehicles shuttled between buildings. The summer heat wave cast a subdued air over the entire city, but it could not suppress the surging vitality of this sunlit metropolis.

Even though the apparent temperature had already climbed above 40 degrees, and even though the weather forecast stubbornly held at 39, people still had to go to work and attend classes. Their leisure activities during breaks after class had simply begun to converge:

People flocked into air-conditioned rooms to escape the sudden, scorching heat, using chilled drinks to cool themselves down. Modern technology made the temperature less important, but the temperature...

But for certain groups, "hot weather" alone was enough to become the greatest obstacle in their daily lives—

"It's so hot! So hot!"

The golden-haired fox girl stood before the cafeteria's enormous electric fan, spreading her arms to embrace the powerful breeze. Her fox tail swayed in the wind, and the air roared in her ears.

But before the fox girl could enjoy the fan to herself for long, a cat girl carrying a meal tray slowly squeezed in beside her.

"It's so hot... Make some room for me... I'm dying here..."

"Then you take the fan, Little Fish. I think I've cooled down enough—"

Su Tianqing moved out of the fan's breeze, but within minutes, she had melted into a puddle of fox on the table and could not help inching back into its airflow.

A fluffy tail was warm and comfortable in winter, but once summer arrived, before its winter coat had finished shedding, that tail became a heat-induced nightmare that Su Tianqing and the other beastfolk could never escape.

...Except for a certain pink-haired rabbit girl, who sat