What Kind of Sack?

At 10:10 p.m., in the largest bar in downtown Yunlan City, a rapper was performing his biggest hit onstage, and the people on the dance floor swayed to the pounding beat.

A female DJ with dreadlocks waved her tattooed arms, leading the patrons below the stage in swaying along with her.

In the aisle along the innermost row of booths, the hype crew led a conga line, moving down the aisle as they scattered red paper into the air. It fluttered down like rose petals.

In the dimly lit hall, multicolored laser lights cast unusual hues over the red paper as it drifted through the air and onto the floor like a shower of flowers. The atmosphere instantly reached a peak: some whistled, some danced, some drank, and some screamed. The rhythmic music made the whole place deafening.

Beyond the hall and through an equally dim corridor was a luxurious private room on the second floor. Lu Linyuan sat in the middle, with Su Qingzhi, his childhood friend who had played with him since they were little, on one side and Chen Xiao, his close friend since middle school, on the other.

Su Qingzhi raised his glass for a toast, but Lu Linyuan didn't seem to notice him holding it up and waiting to clink glasses.

At that moment, Lu Linyuan was watching the surveillance feed on his phone. One look at the screen showed that it was the cat room at home. He had left home at nine thirty, personally taking Ruanruan back to the cat room before leaving. Seeing that she wasn't sleepy, he had left the night-light on so the room wouldn't be too dark and she wouldn't bump into things because she couldn't see her surroundings. She was so small that he really worried one fall might be the end of her.

Su Qingzhi hadn't noticed at first and had been talking to another friend. When he turned around and wondered why Lu Linyuan still hadn't clinked glasses with him, he saw that Lu Linyuan had been looking at his phone the whole time.

Looking at his phone?

At this hour, it couldn't be work. Given this young master's style, if he said he was going drinking, he would definitely have finished all his work beforehand. Could there be something brewing?

Su Qingzhi eagerly leaned over to look. When he saw a little kitten playing by herself on the screen, he was utterly baffled. Frowning, he scrutinized Young Master Lu from every angle; he and the little kitten didn't seem to go together at all.

With him looking him over like that, how could Lu Linyuan not notice? He glanced sideways at him.

"What?"

Su Qingzhi clicked his tongue. "What's with you? Sitting in a bar watching cat videos? When did you suddenly get interested in that? I've been holding up my glass forever, waiting for you to clink it, and you haven't even moved." His tone was disdainful and exasperated. That clear, bright voice was unmistakably the one Ruanruan had heard at home, the one that should have been doing voice acting.

Hearing this, Chen Xiao also glanced at Lu Linyuan's phone screen. It was indeed a bouncing...

Bouncing?

Chen Xiao said seriously, "That's a dog, isn't it? Look how much it's bouncing around."

"Huh, really?" Su Qingzhi looked at Lu Linyuan's phone screen again in confusion.

Before he could take a closer look, Lu Linyuan locked the screen and put his phone away. Raising his glass, he said, "We haven't seen each other for two months. How did you two get so talkative?" With that, he clinked it against the glass Su Qingzhi was still holding up, producing the crisp sound of glass striking glass.

Su Qingzhi turned his head to one side and said to Chen Xiao, "That's a cat. What's wrong with your eyes? You can't even tell a cat from a dog."

Chen Xiao rubbed his nose and coughed lightly. "I didn't get a good look. Besides, it was bouncing around, and it was such a tiny little thing. It's normal to mistake it for a puppy, right?" He then raised his glass and clinked it with each of theirs in turn.

The three of them had a couple of drinks together. Besides the three of them, Su Qingzhi had invited other friends to the private room, and those friends had invited more friends. He liked a lively crowd and didn't mind his friends bringing people, so there were more than a dozen people in the huge room. Some played cards, some sang, and some even played pool, which showed just how large the room was. Judging by its equipment and furnishings, as well as the alcohol, fruit, snacks, and salmon laid out on the three tables, the price of booking it had to be quite something too.

"Whose cat is that? How come you're watching a cat now? Are you planning to get one?"

Lu Linyuan said casually, "I already have one. The cat you just saw is mine."

"Why did you suddenly decide to get a pet out of nowhere? With your personality, I'm really afraid you'll scare that kitten to death." In all fairness, his childhood friend had loved wearing a cold expression since he was little. As a teenager, he had seemed aloof and proud, and now his aura was even stronger; no one dared come within three meters of him.

Take this private room with its dozen or so people. If he and Chen Xiao weren't sitting here, nobody else would dare sit on this sofa. The other two sofas were full of laughter, with drinks being exchanged, while the three of them sat alone together.

"Scare her to death? She's extraordinarily bold. Yiyi sent the cat over. I was away from home for two months, and she brought people over to design a cat room in my house. Once I got back, she had the cat delivered straight to my door." After saying this, Lu Linyuan involuntarily recalled Ruanruan's goofy moments, and a faint smile appeared at the corners of his mouth, unnoticed even by himself.

Though the smile vanished in a flash, it was enough to leave both Chen Xiao and Su Qingzhi looking shocked. They exchanged a glance, and Su Qingzhi said, "Yiyi should've gotten you one to raise sooner. Look at you, even your expression seems less cold after getting a cat. Back when we were in school, I actually wondered if something was wrong with your face. You never had any expression, and I couldn't sense a trace of life in you. You were like a statue."

"If there's nothing funny, what would I be laughing at?"

Chen Xiao added, "So you don't like laughing because your bar for humor is too high?" Then he looked at Su Qingzhi.

Su Qingzhi rolled his eyes. "What high bar for humor? He's just poker-faced! The way you put it makes my bar for humor sound too low." After all, he had laughed a lot in school, so much that, despite still being young, he now had a few faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, though they didn't detract from his good looks.

"Your bar for humor is pretty low," Chen Xiao replied bluntly.

Su Qingzhi immediately got up and lunged over to hit Chen Xiao. Not to be outdone, Chen Xiao caught the fist swinging toward him, and the two wrestled like elementary schoolers. Beside them, Lu Linyuan rested his head in his hand and sighed.

He had never imagined that the two of them, who often fought like this in middle school, would still be no different from elementary schoolers in private, even though they had graduated so many years ago and were each figures whose word was law in their companies.

"Today I'll give you a good look at these biceps of mine, and these gorgeous back muscles. Those lines, that strength, and you still want to fight me? Watch me take you down with ease!" Chen Xiao showed off the results of his recent workouts as he pushed and pulled at Su Qingzhi.

Su Qingzhi didn't like working out. Although he was about the same height as Chen Xiao, he was now completely outmatched. Before graduation, the two had been evenly matched, but how could he compare now with Young Master Chen, who had fallen in love with working out?

"All right, even if you win, it's not a fair victory. Let go, you damned musclehead."

That was as good as Su Qingzhi begging for mercy. Chen Xiao let him go with a smug look, then raised his arm and clenched his fist. His muscles bulged even through his clothes, proof that his workouts had indeed paid off.

"Young Master Lu, what do you think? Give me your assessment."

Not to be outdone, Su Qingzhi urged Lu Linyuan to raise his arm and show it off too, even patting his arm. "Young Master Lu, come on, show him how fierce you are. Let him see what gorgeous really means. Don't compare someone who takes protein powder with you!" Anyone who didn't know better would have thought Lu Linyuan's muscles belonged to him.

"Who the X takes protein powder? I-" It looked like they were about to start arguing again.

"Are you two still drinking? If not, I'm going home." Lu Linyuan wore a flat expression that said he was tired and didn't want to keep them company anymore. He really couldn't stand how childish they were. If he'd known, he might as well have stayed home and played with that kitten; it would have been more fun.

Su Qingzhi hurriedly smoothed out Lu Linyuan's clothes where he had wrinkled them, grinning as he said, "We were wrong, we were wrong, Young Master Lu. Come on, let's keep talking about that puppy-ah, no, that kitten. Can you show her to us again? How many months old is she? Why does she look so tiny? Couldn't you have spent a little more to buy a bigger one?"

Chen Xiao picked up his glass and took a sip as though nothing had happened. "Right, I want another look at that cat too."

Talking about the cat woke him right up.

Su Qingzhi and Chen Xiao had assumed Lu Linyuan wouldn't want to show them, or rather, couldn't be bothered to show them. But the next second, the expressionless Young Master Lu readily took out his phone, opened the surveillance feed, and joined the two of them in watching Ruanruan play at home.

Chen Xiao and Su Qingzhi crowded around Lu Linyuan, one on either side. After watching for a while, Chen Xiao said, "This kitten doesn't seem very steady on her feet. She always looks like she's about to fall-" No sooner had he spoken than Ruanruan took a tumble on the surveillance feed.

Su Qingzhi hissed at the sight. "Good grief, that looked painful. Why not put some soft mats on the floor? She's so small-what if a fall knocks her silly?"

"She's so plump. She looks like she'd feel great to the touch," Chen Xiao remarked.

The two traded comments, and as they talked, a Lu family servant came in with a little feeding bottle and called Ruanruan over for her milk.

Ruanruan scrambled to her feet as if the bottle of milk would vanish into thin air if she were even a second too slow.

When she caught the bottle in her mouth and began gulping the milk down, Su Qingzhi couldn't stop the smile spreading across his face as he watched.

"Look, her ears look like they're about to fly when she drinks. They keep moving." Su Qingzhi hadn't expected the little kitten to get cuter the longer he looked, or to make him want more and more to pick her up and give her a good rub.

Chen Xiao watched for quite a while before suddenly saying something.

"My sack is ready."

"?"

Lu Linyuan and Su Qingzhi both looked at Chen Xiao, neither of them understanding at first, since their eyes had just been on Ruanruan.

Chen Xiao said with a perfectly straight face, "I'm getting ready to take a sack and kidnap this kitten. Young Master Lu, you don't like cats and dogs anyway, so why not just give her to me to raise?"