“Hu——”
In the thick, ink-dark night, a man’s deliberately suppressed, heavy breathing echoed from within the room, carrying with it an unbearable pain.
Li Wan glanced worriedly at the tightly shut door. She hesitated for a moment, then sighed and withdrew her gaze.
She knew that inside, her so-called owner was suffering from another attack of his illness—agonizing beyond words. But…
Right now, she was only a two-month-old kitten. What could she possibly do?
The snow-white kitten gave a little flick of her tail tip, her expression looking somewhat downcast.
Before her stood a pane of glass which, under the faint moonlight, barely served as a mirror. Inside it, a kitten mimicked her every move.
The kitten’s looks were exquisite: her whole body covered in soft, pure white fur, only the fluffy tip of her tail shaded like ink slowly thickening, streaked with a patch of black.
Her ears, nose, and little paw pads were all a tender pink—so soft and inviting, one couldn’t help but want to nibble them.
This was Li Wan now.
Thinking back, what had happened these past few days felt almost fantastical.
She had originally been just an ordinary university student. On her way home, she acted on impulse to save a child who was about to be crushed beneath the wheels of a truck. She pulled the child free, but in the next instant, she herself died in the accident.
The bone-deep pain hadn’t even faded before she opened her eyes again—only to find she had become what she was now, with fragments of a kitten’s memories lodged in her mind.
Piecing together those vague, broken scraps, she roughly figured out her current situation.
She had transmigrated into a novel.
Specifically, into the role of the kitten owned by the villain, Movie Emperor Chi Yan, the character set up as the foil to the male lead.
The novel was called <My Dearest Thinks of Me>. From the female lead’s perspective it was all sweetness and romance, but from the villain’s side… it was anything but pleasant.
Chi Yan’s father died in a car accident when he was young. His mother blamed him for her husband’s death, abandoned him, and remarried.
The male lead, Fu Shilin, was the child of the man she remarried.
Chi Yan’s mother ignored him completely, never gave him a cent for living expenses or school tuition. He grew up only thanks to the pity of a few kind neighbors and his own sheer stubborn will to survive.
But she doted on Fu Shilin endlessly, as if he were the very apple of her eye.
Over time, Chi Yan grew twisted, developing severe paranoia.
He grew more and more jealous of Fu Shilin. Sometimes he even thought: if Fu Shilin were gone, maybe his mother would leave her new husband just as easily as she left him, and return to his side.
So he did all sorts of foolish, destructive things. Picking fights with Fu Shilin in the entertainment industry, deliberately targeting him even as a top actor, and even trying to steal the girl Fu Shilin liked.
As is the iron rule of novels, anyone who stands against the protagonist meets a bad end.
Chi Yan’s own mother came to loathe him more and more. Eventually, after she goaded him into desperation, he kidnapped the female lead, Du Qingqing, intending to make Fu Shilin feel the pain of losing a loved one. But before the eyes of the entire internet, Du Qingqing resisted and knocked him off a cliff, where he fell into the sea and died.
With such a villain’s setting, it was impossible for Chi Yan to voluntarily keep a kitten.
So how did Li Wan end up in his home? That goes back to the plot.
The male lead Fu Shilin fell in love with Du Qingqing at first sight and schemed to get close to her. When he learned she would be on a pet-themed reality show called <A Family of Furry Friends>, he eagerly joined too.
Chi Yan, finding out, decided to join as well—just to spite Fu Shilin.
Naturally, as the male lead’s foil, Fu Shilin came out of the show with a flawless ‘good guy’ image, his popularity skyrocketing. Chi Yan, on the other hand, had his image collapse on camera, and his popularity plummeted.
That was one of the key reasons behind his later extreme actions.
Li Wan was the kitten assigned to him by the show.
…Though in fact, she wasn’t originally meant for him at all. She had been assigned to Fu Shilin. But in his usual contrarian way, Chi Yan snatched her away.
Li Wan : “…”
Fu Shilin’s assigned pet became a fierce, aggressive dog. The kitten’s soft, delicate meows caught its attention, and on camera it lunged forward, sinking its teeth into her.
How could a tiny kitten withstand the bite of a large fighting dog? She was about to be torn apart when Chi Yan, without thinking, rushed forward to save her—only to have his own hand bone crushed by the dog’s jaws.
The production crew scrambled to restrain the dog, but it was already too late.
The kitten died on the spot. Chi Yan’s hand was left with a permanent injury.
Since it all happened live on camera, the incident became a hot topic online.
Some said Chi Yan was stupid—he got hurt just because he jumped into a fight between a cat and a dog.
Others claimed he was malicious—that he had deliberately let Fu Shilin’s dog maul him so he could frame the male lead.
No one remembered that it was Fu Shilin’s unrestrained, unmuzzled dog that had caused the tragedy in the first place.
Li Wan let out a sigh.
As expected of the ‘foil.’
For the villain, no matter what he did, as long as it clashed with Fu Shilin, it was always his fault.
Still, from that incident, it seemed Chi Yan wasn’t such a bad ‘cat butler1‘ after all.
“Hu——”
In the darkness, the man’s ragged breathing grew heavier and heavier, sounding almost ghostly.
Li Wan stamped her foot in impatience, pacing back and forth twice.
She knew exactly what this was about. The original plot had explained it.
Chi Yan’s childhood had been extremely dark. Not only was his personality warped, but he had also developed paranoia.
Every time his paranoia flared up, he suffered splitting headaches.
This setup made it seem as though he and the author bore some irreconcilable grudge.
Li Wan shook her head, her little whiskers trembling slightly.
The image of her first glimpse of Chi Yan that afternoon floated into her mind.
When she transmigrated over, the kitten had just been delivered. At this point, Chi Yan, as a Movie Emperor, hadn’t yet collapsed in public persona or gotten entangled in scandals. His career was still strong.
During the week she had been here, Chi Yan had been busy outside, only returning yesterday afternoon.
The man carried clear exhaustion on him, yet his tall, lean figure seemed as if even his bones carried a moonlit chill.
Those peach-blossom eyes had a languid depth of color, yet the coldness that clung to him suppressed any trace of flirtation, making him seem untouchably distant.
When Li Wan had hidden behind the cat tower to observe him, he noticed her. His indifferent glance nailed her in place, the sheer detachment in his eyes pinning her where she stood.
He didn’t seem quite the same as in the original plot.
There, Chi Yan had been described as someone outwardly bright and refined, but inwardly a twisted lunatic from the sewers.
But what Li Wan saw seemed more like a shard of moonlight on a wintry night—colder, heavier than moonlight itself.
In any case, he was handsome.
Li Wan couldn’t quite bear the thought of such pain befalling him.
But right now, she was only a powerless little kitten. Even if she went inside, she couldn’t be of any help.
The kitten swished her fluffy tail, thinking maybe she should just curl up in her nest and pretend she hadn’t seen anything.
It wasn’t out of coldness. After all, in the original plot, Chi Yan definitely had villain credentials. During a seizure, he recognized no one. If he turned on the kitten—
Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass burst from the room: *Clang—*!!
The man’s heavy breathing grew deeper and slower.
Li Wan froze.
By the time she reacted, she had already leapt up and twisted the doorknob open.
“……”
…Well then.
Li Wan padded slowly inside.
A cat’s night vision was sharp. She immediately spotted the man in the corner.
He sat on the floor with his eyes lowered. Behind him, the moonlight cast a huge shadow, as if he were some monster abandoned in the darkness.
Most of his pale face was swallowed by shadow, but sweat beaded his exposed forehead.
One hand rested loosely on his knee, hanging at an angle. Somewhere he had been cut, and bright drops of blood clung to his fingertips—like flowers blooming along blue-black veins.
Li Wan hesitated, then nimbly dodged the shards of the shattered glass lampshade, slipping easily to his side.
He was breathing harshly, heavily.
Li Wan could smell the faint mix of sweat and lingering body wash clinging to him. It was not unpleasant.
She didn’t rush closer.
Instead, she sat where she was, tail curled around her, trying to think of what to do.
What now?
A kitten couldn’t exactly call a doctor for him.
Even if she could, Chi Yan wouldn’t allow it. His pride was too strong. He would never let others see him in such a wretched state.
If Li Wan were human right now, chances were Chi Yan would have strangled her or tossed her straight out the window.
Thinking this, the little kitten even felt a tiny flicker of relief.
Chi Yan was still sunk in his nightmare, but his half-‘stray’ childhood without a true home had made him sharply aware of his surroundings.
He gradually sensed something, lifted his gaze, and those deep, heavy eyes fell on the little kitten before him.
The stray cat the show crew had delivered.
After being cleaned up, she had stayed in the house. He himself had gone to shoot a magazine cover, only returning yesterday.
But stray cats feared people. This was the first time he had truly ‘come face-to-face’ with her.
No doubt about it, she was cute enough to be chosen by the program.
Soft fur all over, large eyes, tilting her fuzzy head at him.
His gaze seemed devoid of emotion, but in that moment Li Wan felt as though some terrifying predator had locked onto her.
In that look lurked a chilling, bloodthirsty undertone, as if he were calculating how many bites it would take to devour her small body.
“!!!”
The kitten’s animal instinct flared. Her fur puffed up all at once, making her look like a kiwi.
*Pfft*.
For some reason, Chi Yan understood what she was thinking, and wasn’t the least surprised.
Yes, little animals always liked to approach warm, harmless humans. Someone like him, they never favored.
Finding it boring, he coldly withdrew his gaze.
But the very next instant—
His pupils shrank sharply!
The cat gave a soft little *Meow,* stood up, shook out her fur, then edged closer, arching her body—
And pressed a warm, soft touch against the back of his hand.
- 铲屎官 (chǎnshǐ guān): Literally “poop-scooping official,” this is a popular and humorous Chinese slang term for a cat owner. It was a meant as a humorous term, but the literal translation didn’t sound good, so I chose to translate it to the somewhat equivalent English term, ‘cat butler’. ↩︎
rokumi’s note : I got interested in this novel because the ML has the same name as with <Becoming Popular Through The “All Villains” Variety Show. However…. I thought there won’t be any parent worse than Father Shang, but now I think that father who at least fulfilled his financial responsibility is a little better than this mother.