Chapter Text
It was under the Warm Red Pavilion porch, and its cries were getting distressing.
Shen Jiu was not about to kneel in the mud, but if he crouched as low as he could and nearly put his head between his knees, he could see the source: a rat-sized, tufty, splay-legged kitten, all toothless maw and distrustfully squinted eyes. It was astonishingly loud for how small and how weak it appeared.
“Oh, the poor thing,” Gu-mei said uncertainly, when he brought it out. She and the others hadn’t been about to kneel in the mud, either, although in their case it was more understandable. Their matron would’ve murdered them and the washerwoman would’ve brought them back to murder again.
“Oh!” Fa-jie said, “Oh, it must be the child of that cat that - it really is a poor thing, meimei, its mom was murdered by a dog while she was trying to move the others!”
“Oh, how awful!”
“That horrible noise last night, was that her? I thought A-Jiu was getting rid of some monsters for us!”
“Who’s been feeding that dog scraps at the back door, ah?!”
A-Jiu had slept through the whole thing. He had been safe on the second story, behind solid walls, and surrounded by the soft scents of women and their pillowy, silken bodies. Even the street brat who depended on Qi-ge and light sleep to avoid a fate similar to mother cat’s gave up and rolled over in that company. He would pay them a bonus.
“It’s too young to live without its mother, and it looks like she left the runt behind, anyway. What a shame.” Sha-mei was soft-voiced, but pitilessly practical. She’d make a good madam, if that was where her life led her.
“She had eight others!” Fa-jie protested, as if leaving the runt who couldn’t secure itself a nipple somehow made the cat a bad mother and she felt defensive about it. She had an odd way of observing all the details and yet pouncing on the most irrelevant avenue of thought. It made her a humorous conversationalist, at least. She was also a regular bleeding heart, with more courage than sense. Come to think of it, she looked guilty now, in a way that somehow suggested ‘I rescued a kitten the madam wouldn’t approve of’ rather than ‘I stood by and did nothing while its mother and siblings were eaten.’
Sure enough, the hand she put to her bosom steadied a squirming third lump, and Shen Jiu stifled a laugh. That was the luckiest kitten ever to be born.
The unlucky ninth kitten wasn’t dead yet. It had stopped screaming and was trying to latch onto the tip of his finger to nurse. It was getting muck all over his hands. When his pinky gave no milk, it put its snoot in the air and gave an aggrieved yawp. “Huh. What does a cat this young need?”
He took it back to the peak, and modified his least-favorite water-dripper for milk (by putting milk in it) and a handkerchief into a sling to keep it from wandering around inside his robes and getting them dirty. Then he went to class.
—
He got kicked out of class. Apparently nursing a kitten in his robes looked indecent (what? His hands were ABOVE his belt, what did they think he was doing?) and not nursing the kitten resulted in distracting kitten wails. It was only calligraphy, anyway. The hallmaster had looked flabbergasted as he walked off, but his shifu wasn’t going to give a fuck about anything unrelated to her own comforts and whims, so Shen Jiu was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be punished. He went to the back of the kitchen.
“What is that?” asked the only other reasonable human being on Qing Jing Peak.
“It is a strange mobile tumor. I’m keeping it for now so that Mu-shidi can study it.”
“Uh-huh.” Aunty Soup Cook tucked the ladle back in the broth and stirred.
“It’s a parasite I picked up on a mission, and I’m too embarrassed to get it removed.”
“You’re shameless.”
“It’s an excuse to get out of class.”
“Now that sounds plausible, but doesn’t answer my question. Puppy, kitten, or some other beast?”
“It-“ The little beast’s mew answered that question. Or not, really; all babies sounded very much alike. He took it out to show her.
“Awww, the precious little bundle! If you let it anywhere near my pots it’s charcoal.”
“Yes, Aunty.”
“Do you know how to feed it? It’ll need softened meat once it starts getting teeth. Once it’s a little more active, you can start raiding the box traps to train it on mice. Start with the mostly-dead, move up to the merely wounded, then let it loose on regular live ones. Soon it’ll be feeding itself - and ridding us of a few pests.”
“Oh. That’s… good to know. You hear, little beast? You’re going to be useful.”
“It’s not a spiritual beast, is it?”
“Oh, no, just an ordinary stray. Completely mundane.”
Aunty Soup Cook’s face scrunched sadly. “It won’t last long, then.”
“Doesn’t matter. Fei-jie said they can live fifteen to twenty years, under someone’s care. I’m fifteen to twenty now. Fifteen years from now, I intend this to be the fattest, happiest, oldest cat you’ve ever seen. He or she will have three hundred grandchildren.”
“That’s a good goal.”
“Mn.”
“What have you named it?”
“Oh, I haven’t. I probably won’t.” Little Nine, some treacherous organ suggested. He squashed it with vigor.
—
He dodged, and dodged again, heart in his throat. How the fuck to end this without crushing the little beast too young to even know it was digging its claws into his belly?
“I can’t fight!” he yelled, breathlessly. What reason would the animal attacking him care about? He put his hand to his lower abdomen. “I’m - I’m carrying an innocent life!”
His feet were planted to get him out of the way, but the Bai Zhan Thundering Clod skidded to a halt halfway through a sword form so perfect it could have been used for a manual. His eyes bugged.
“You got PREGNANT?!” screeched the pride of the peak that did absolutely no thinking whatsoever.
An evil grin curled Shen Jiu’s lip against his will. He settled back and feigned a nonchalant shrug. “With all the time I spend at the Warm Red Pavilion, what did you expect?”
The Runaway Boulder narrowed his eyes… squinting past the dazzle of his earlier lightning insight. “How.”
Shen Jiu coughed delicately. He couldn’t blush on command, more’s the pity.
The Bai Zhan Natural Disaster could, though. Oh, he was changing like a sunset. Vivid pink to almost purple! “Don’t tell me.” He turned abruptly, and started to walk off, stiff with turmoil. Then he turned back. “I won’t fight you until it’s, it’s. …” Another pause for intense cogitation. “Um. I thought you were a man.”
Now there was an interesting avenue of escape from the hell of the dorms. But no. “I am.”
“…Oh. Okay. In a year, then.”
“Byeeee.” This kitten was his lucky, lucky charm! This kitten was sent by Guanyin herself! Give mercy, get mercy! And Liu-shidi’s assumption also gave him the perfect name for the horrible critter.
“I picked a name. I’m calling it Bastard.”
“Please don’t name it that.”
“You can thank Liu-shidi for the inspiration. I picked it up in a whorehouse, it’s that or Venereal Disease.”
“…You can name it Bastard.”