The identity of the writhing shadow

"Xiao Bai?"

Amid the grating meows, he could still make out that "aunt's" fragmented voice if he listened carefully. It sounded like bubbles being popped.

Su Bai fought the urge to cover his ears. With every stray cat gone from Room 402, all their meows now coming from inside that writhing shadow, and that "aunt's" strange voice mingling with countless feline cries, he almost found the room full of glowing cat eyes he had seen earlier more comforting.

"Xiao Bai, why did you come back?"

"Meow-meow-"

Su Bai strained to make out what his "aunt" was saying. After a moment's thought, he stayed by the front door and lifted the little black cat in his arms. "It's nothing. This kitten seems to have followed me out when I left."

"Is that the new kitten from earlier? It seems different from the others, a little more mischievous. It doesn't fit in, either." His "aunt" seemed to let out a long sigh amid the meows.

"Xiao Bai, bring that cat over to me." The writhing shadow in the rocking chair extended two long tentacles, though on closer inspection, they looked like elongated cat tails.

Su Bai did not move right away. Instead, he examined the interior of Room 402 again through his left eye.

Then he noticed the table in the living room. Earlier, his "aunt" had invited him to have a cup of tea before leaving. He even remembered a glass teapot on the table, filled with clear lemon water with a small lime steeping in it.

But when Su Bai looked again, although the glass teapot was still sitting neatly on the dining table, what bobbed up and down inside it was no lime. It was a... human eye.

Su Bai took a deep breath. Being cautious about eating and drinking in the Nightmare World had clearly been the right choice.

"Xiao Bai, what's wrong?"

"I feel like... this kitten and I have a bit of a connection. Why don't you let me take it with me?" Although Su Bai had only just encountered the kitten, the Little Black Cat's appearance remained unchanged in his left eye's vision. Even if there were no living animals in the Nightmare World, it was probably just an innocent wandering animal spirit.

If he handed it over to his "aunt," would it disappear like the other cats?

"Aunt, where are the cats?" To avoid making too much noise, Su Bai simply closed the door to Room 402.

With his left eye, he could see the living room and his "aunt" in the rocking chair even without any light, though everything was veiled in a bloody tint. He also noticed a black, long-handled umbrella hanging beside the door. If anything went wrong, it would make a handy weapon.

After all, besides his eye, Black Umbrella's power could also lengthen any long, rod-shaped object. Compared with ordinary sticks or flashy swords, he was actually more interested in umbrellas. That was where his name came from.

"They were too hungry. I was afraid they'd wander off, so I shut them away." His "aunt's" voice gradually sank beneath the meows.

"I checked next door," Su Bai said, choosing his words carefully. "These cats must have eaten quite a lot already. Everything except Room 401 should have been eaten clean."

"..." The writhing shadow in the rocking chair fell silent.

Su Bai knew perfectly well that if his increasingly probing questions provoked this "aunt," the shadow in the rocking chair might attack him after recovering her memories. Although he had repeatedly warned Feng Ling to stay in character, that was also because her condition made her unsuited to confronting supernatural entities head-on.

When he was confident he could deal with an opponent without causing too much commotion, Su Bai preferred to take the initiative and make the supernatural side lose a few more points.

That might even give them more room for error when the other players stirred up trouble.

But to Su Bai's surprise, the writhing shadow remained in the creaking rocking chair, showing no sign of being provoked.

"Yes." Amid the meows, his "aunt's" fragmented voice sighed again. "But these little things have become so strange. No matter how much they eat, it never seems to be enough. They've already eaten so much, yet they keep crying that they're hungry."

"But they really liked the bread you brought, Xiao Bai." The writhing shadow used a tentacle to pick up the paper bag Su Bai had given "her" earlier. His "aunt" must have torn up the bread inside and fed it to the cats. "It tasted a lot like the food they found before."

When Su Bai looked over, only a small piece of something remained in the open paper bag.

But it was not bread. It was a piece of unidentified meat, and it looked far from fresh.

Ning Yan had packed the bread she made into the paper bag right in front of them. Why had that fresh, fragrant bread turned into stale chunks of meat in his left eye's vision? Had something been wrong with the ingredients Ning Yan found in Room 204?

"..." Su Bai was rather glad he had not drunk that cup of coffee in Room 204.

"Have you come to take them away?" the writhing shadow suddenly asked. "I suddenly feel as though I don't know you, and as though I don't have a relative called 'Xiao Bai,' either."

"You've recovered your memories." Su Bai spoke with certainty, though her calmness was unexpected. "Do you remember why they're so hungry?"

The meows in the room gradually quieted.

The writhing shadow did not answer Su Bai's question immediately. Instead, she reached out a tentacle and drew back the curtains beside the rocking chair. This not only let moonlight spill into the living room, but also allowed the shadow to see the Red Moon in the sky outside and the writhing black mass reflected in the window.

"The cats and I all love looking at the moon."

"I'm not actually their owner. They created me to take care of them." The shadow's voice was still fragmented. "I don't know why they and I appeared here, either. After all, before this, we were clearly in..."

The shadow paused, seemingly unsure how to describe the place where "she" and the cats had lived before.

"A cemetery where dead animals are buried?" Su Bai offered his guess.

"..." The writhing shadow went rigid for a few seconds, then nodded with what appeared to be her head. "Most of these cats were abandoned by humans. Some because their owners graduated, some because of breakups, some because of a move, and some because an elderly owner passed away... They all had owners once. After being abandoned, they couldn't live like true strays, and eventually died by the roadside from starvation or other causes."

"But they were lucky, too. After they died, they weren't left to rot in the rain. They were cremated and brought to the stray cat cemetery in a nearby burial ground. All their ashes were scattered together, no longer separate from one another." Without the meowing, the shadow's voice became much clearer.

"Perhaps because so many of them once had owners, they would sometimes miss the humans who abandoned them for all sorts of reasons. And so, over time... I was born." The writhing shadow let out another long sigh. "Perhaps their memories were too hazy and inaccurate. In the end, what was born from those memories, that longing, and even that hatred was something like me."

"The more cats there were in the grave, the more emotions I had to bear, and the more unstable my body became. That's how I ended up like this." The writhing shadow tugged at the dress pieced together from rags on her body. "The strongest emotion in the grave was hatred for humans after being abandoned. Yet they never drove me away. Instead, they always loved gathering around me and watching the moon with me."

"Maybe it's because..."

"No matter how much they hate them, they still deeply love their former owners?"

At that, the shadow writhed as she turned toward Su Bai, extending two cat-tail-like tentacles toward him. "I remember now. This little black kitten only arrived at the cemetery recently. It doesn't seem to have been abandoned. It just couldn't find its way home, no matter what."

"Come, little one. Come back to me." The shadow beckoned to the Little Black Cat in Su Bai's arms with her tentacles. "They've all returned to my body to rest quietly. It's already a little crowded in there, but I'll still do my best to take care of you all."

Su Bai held the kitten close and took a step back toward the long-handled umbrella.

He felt he could understand everything the shadow had endured, and he neither could nor wanted to separate her from those stray cats. But now that he had taken this Little Black Cat, which had run to him of its own accord, into his arms, he would not let it return to that cold, twisted cemetery.