Meow

That night.

Lu Menge paced back and forth in the faculty apartments. Seven steps from the door to the windowsill. Seven steps from the windowsill back to the door. Little White Tiger curled up in a rattan chair, its head turning with each of her trips. After several rounds, it yawned and buried its face in its paws.

She had been pacing for nearly two hours.

"Gu Yue."

Gu Yue sat on the sofa opposite the rattan chair, flipping through a book she had casually pulled from Lu Menge's bookshelf. At the sound of her name, she lifted her eyelids slightly. Lu Menge had dragged her here by force—more precisely, Lu Menge had stood outside her dorm room and pulled her out of meditation with the words, "Come out with me," and an expression of seriousness Gu Yue had never seen before. She had not asked where they were going or what they were doing. One look at Lu Menge's face had told her: it was still that matter.

"You're sure you're going tonight?" Gu Yue closed the book.

"Now. Immediately. While I still have the nerve." Lu Menge snatched up the coat draped over the back of the chair, startling Little White Tiger with the force of the movement. "He already took me for some kept woman's victim at the training ground this afternoon. I can't delay this. One more day, and he'll imagine another episode. If I keep putting it off, he'll even picture what my 'sugar daddy' looks like."

Gu Yue did not move. Lu Menge had already reached the door, one hand braced against the frame as she looked back. Her amber fox eyes burned with determination.

"You're not coming with me?"

"I am." Gu Yue rose, unhurriedly returned the book to its original place on the shelf, then took out her phone, unlocked it, and checked the remaining battery. The gesture was so natural that Lu Menge gave it no thought at all.

"Let's go."

Wu Changkong's office was on the second floor of the administration building. At this hour, he was usually still organizing the day's training logs. Lu Menge walked quickly all the way there, her low-heeled ankle boots tapping out a rapid rhythm along the corridor. Gu Yue followed behind her, still composed, phone in hand with its screen facing down.

Light shone through the crack beneath the office door. Wu Changkong was indeed inside.

Lu Menge stopped before the door and drew in a deep breath. She turned to glance at Gu Yue, who gave her a slight nod. Then she raised her hand and knocked three times—harder than usual, faster than usual.

Footsteps sounded from inside. The lock clicked softly.

The door opened.

Wu Changkong stood in the doorway, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, an open folder in his hand. He had clearly been reviewing documents. Seeing the two women outside, his brow moved almost imperceptibly—not in surprise, but assessment. Lu Menge stood at the front, her coat draped over her shoulders and a light gray sweater beneath it. Her hair hung loose, the ends softly curled. Her posture was straighter than usual, chin slightly raised, expression tightly wound. Half a step behind her, Gu Yue stood expressionlessly.

"Teacher Lu?" Wu Changkong lowered the folder.

Lu Menge opened her mouth.

What she had prepared to say was, "Teacher Wu, I need to explain what happened this afternoon. My strength is not limited to what you saw." She had rehearsed those words dozens of times in her head. On the way from the apartments to the administration building, she had kept silently reciting them, confirming every word—the tone, the speed, the emphasis. Everything had been arranged.

But the moment she opened her mouth, a voice suddenly popped into her mind. More accurately, three words. Gu Yue's voice. Beneath the ginkgo tree that afternoon, that little brat had leaned close to her ear and said the most outrageous three words in the coldest possible tone—"Like seduction."

Then those three words exploded in her mind. All the way to the tip of her tongue.

"Meow."

The corridor of the administration building seemed to have been put on pause. Wu Changkong's fingers froze at the edge of the folder. Gu Yue's phone rose by an inch.

Lu Menge's lips still held that slightly parted curve, but her mind had already rapidly retraced everything that had just happened—she had made a sound. Not "Teacher Wu," not "come out," not any human language. It had been a cat's meow. A soft, light meow, the last note even lifting slightly—meow. Gu Yue's "little kitty" had occupied her mind the entire evening. The instant she opened her mouth, the image of those words collided with the line, "Come out, I have something to say to you," and produced the wrong output.

She froze where she stood. Then her face began to burn. Not gradually warming, but instantly catching fire—from her cheekbones to her ears, from her ears down to her neck. Her whole face reddened as if Heavenfrost Sword had struck it. She saw Wu Changkong tilt his head ever so slightly, and an emotion she had never seen before appeared in those normally cold, stern eyes—blankness. Pure blankness, untouched by judgment. He even leaned back half an inch, as though instinctively making room for some uncontrollable variable.

"Teacher Lu—"

She did not wait for him to finish.

She turned, took off—and ran. Not an ordinary run, but the fastest speed she could manage in her life without revealing her true form. Her feet pounded out a string of rapid taps across the corridor floor. Her coat slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground, but she did not pick it up. At the corner, she instinctively planted a hand against the wall, slapping her palm against it with a dull thud, then vanished into the stairwell.

Lu Menge had run away. Nine-Headed White Tiger, an ancient sacred beast who commanded slaughter and battle, who had never retreated half a step on the battlefields of the God Realm and had not blinked when the Dragon God fell—had been scared off by her own cat meow.

Gu Yue remained where she was, holding her previous pose with one hand raised, her phone camera pointed at the stairwell where Lu Menge had disappeared. Her violet eyes watched the final frozen image on the screen—a blurred mass of light gray sweater and flying silver-white hair—then she pressed the stop recording button.

The corners of her mouth split into a grin.

First, her shoulders shook. Then an extremely soft, distorted puff of laughter escaped her throat. In the quiet corridor, it sounded exceptionally clear, as though something that had been suppressed for countless years had finally cracked open. Wu Changkong withdrew his gaze from the end of the corridor and turned to Gu Yue. He said nothing, his expression still that glacial face, but the knuckles gripping his folder had gone slightly white.

Gu Yue finally could not hold it in any longer. One hand holding up her phone and the other braced against the administration building wall, she laughed so hard that she bent over like a shrimp. Her silver hair slipped over her shoulders, concealing her face but not the trembling of her entire body. Her laughter rolled from her throat, utterly unrestrained—the heartfelt kind of laughter the Silver Dragon King had never made since awakening. Wu Changkong stood in the office doorway, silently watching the female student who was usually colder than anyone laugh until she could barely stand upright.

"HAHAHAHA—"

"..."

"A cat meow—did you hear it—" Gu Yue clutched her stomach, laughing so hard that tears nearly came out. "Teacher Lu—she—"

Of course Wu Changkong had heard it. Everyone in the administration building who was not deaf had heard it. He simply could not understand it yet. He needed to sort through all of Lu Menge's preparations before she entered, her unusual microexpressions just now, and that completely out-of-character "meow."

"Was she here to see me just now?" he asked.

Gu Yue wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, straightened up, and took a deep breath. She spent several seconds barely restoring the Silver Dragon King's composure, but failed—the corners of her mouth were still lifted, and the lingering amusement in her violet eyes could not be erased.

"Yes. She originally had something to say to you."

"...What?"

"It's not important now." Gu Yue waved the video file on her phone screen. "This is more important."

She turned and left, heading toward the stairwell while bending to pick up Lu Menge's coat from the floor. After taking two steps, she looked back at Wu Changkong, her violet eyes brimming with delight.

"Teacher Wu," she said, tilting her head, "if she comes looking for you again, you'd better not speak first. Let her finish. Otherwise, she'll run away again."

Wu Changkong stood in the office doorway, watching Gu Yue vanish into the stairwell. The corridor fell quiet again. He slowly backed into his office and shut the door. He stood before his desk for a long time, the documents spread open without a page turned. The scene kept replaying in his mind: Lu Menge opened her mouth—blushed—ran away. In those ten seconds, she had become entirely different. Not the usual lazy, carefree, effortlessly composed Teacher Lu, nor the person who had once sat alone on the sofa and calmly said, "They all died," in a way that tightened his chest. During those ten seconds, she had completely lost control.

He returned to the corridor, bent down to pick up the fallen folder, and brushed the dust from it. His gaze settled once more on the stairwell at the end of the hall.

"...Teacher Lu."

Gu Yue was still trembling when she reached the edge of the field. She draped Lu Menge's coat over her arm and used her other hand to open her phone gallery, sending Tang Wulin a message.

Gu Yue: [Video]

Tang Wulin instantly replied with three question marks. Half a minute later, messages began popping up one after another.

Tang Wulin: Is that Teacher Lu????

Gu Yue: Yes.

Tang Wulin: What happened to her???

Gu Yue: She said she was going to explain things clearly to Teacher Wu. The moment she opened her mouth, she meowed. Then she ran. I recorded it from beside her.

Tang Wulin was silent for a long while. Then he sent one message.

Tang Wulin: Will she kill you tomorrow to silence you?

Gu Yue slipped her phone into her pocket and headed for the faculty apartments. She was not afraid. Tonight had been worth it. This coat could serve as a bargaining chip tomorrow, and she would hide the recording away and take it out every so often to enjoy herself. When she reached Lu Menge's door, she stood there for a while. Through the crack, she could faintly hear Lu Menge talking to Little White Tiger—or rather, muttering to herself while pacing back and forth in the room. Her voice was muffled, with none of her usual lazy boldness.

"...I didn't mean to... I just kept thinking about it... the moment I opened my mouth, it was a cat meow. I've lived this long and never lost this much face. Did you see Wu Changkong's expression? He must think I'm crazy..."

Gu Yue curved her lips and did not knock. She folded Lu Menge's coat and hung it on the doorknob, then turned toward her own room. Her violet eyes glimmered beneath the dim yellow corridor lights. There was still amusement in them, but beneath that amusement lay a softness even she could not explain.

That night, the moonlight over Eastsea Academy was beautiful. Tang Wulin curled beneath his blankets and watched the video seven or eight times, laughing so hard he nearly rolled off the top bunk. Then he fell into a difficult choice between Gu Yue's messages: "Don't tell her you watched it," and "Send it again."