Pet King

Sihwa was all too familiar with the Live Broadcasting application interface. When she was not broadcasting, she often wandered to other host’s rooms. With one look, she knew that Zhang Zian was watching a Live Broadcast and had not managed to exit before she came by.

“You’re watching a live broadcast?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

“Oh, this? Snowy just had a live broadcast, and it seemed like her fans were giving clues about the Holy Cat Statue, so I was just listening on the way back… I was just listening, I didn’t really watch it, so I did not break any traffic rules!” Zhang Zian casually said in order to deal with her. After that, he left no trace and exited the application, then his tone changed as he asked, “Do you know about the Holy Cat Statue? Did I not tell you about it before?”

His change of topic was a bit deliberate and Sihwa stared at him suspiciously. “I’ve heard a bit here and there. Fina has been sleeping in the morning recently, and I heard it was so that she could be more vigilant at night… That doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me, though.”

“Haha! You thought that before the Holy Cat Statue disappeared, Fina did not sleep in the daytime?” Zhang Zian laughed, then hurriedly turned around to see if there was a golden cat sitting somewhere behind him. Thank goodness it was not behind him.

He pulled up his contacts page, found Wei Kang’s number, and then went to call it himself; however, Sihwa hurriedly extended her hand and said, “Let me call!”

“You can call him, but after it goes through, you have to let me speak,” Zhang Zian instructed.

He did not want to have to explain to Professor Wei Kang as to why a woman was using his phone to call people. If he and Wei Kang had a misunderstanding it would not be good. Middle-aged, older men like Professor Wei Kang who were around 50 plus years old often liked to introduce young people to the opposite gender to set them up. As a professor, he probably knew quite a few young female university students, right?

He was anticipating the trip to Egypt quite a bit. If there were younger women in the expedition that had a beautiful appearance, long legs, and a good chest… then when they met danger, he could enact the role of a hero saving a beauty scene. From then on, they would think that he was charming…

Sihwa did not know that the thoughts in his head were that complicated. She took his phone from him and swiped on his phone screen. Even after swiping a few times, she had not reached the bottom. “Wah! You have so many contacts!” she said with envy. Her phone only had Zhang Zian as a contact.

“Most of them are customers that I added to be polite. I have never actually called them before.” Zhang Zian shrugged his shoulders. “You need to find Professor Wei Kang. Find it from W…”

“I know! Don’t look down on me!” Sihwa wrinkled her nose and glared at him fiercely.

She scrolled and scrolled until her finger eventually stopped on one of the contacts.

The contact only had one word as their name––or to be accurate, it was not a name, but rather a designated name: “Mom.”

Sihwa’s heart suddenly grew sour. She knew that Zhang Zian’s parents had encountered an accident and passed away. She hadn’t seen her parents since she was born––like him, she had no relatives in the world.

The page’s contacts started with ‘M.’ To find ‘W,’ she needed to continue scrolling down, but her fingers started scrolling up until she found “Dad” in the ‘D’ section.

Was it that he didn’t have the habit of sorting out his contacts regularly? Why would he keep a phone number that would never be used again? It would only cause the contact list to become longer and longer… Or could it be that the longer his contact list, the more satisfied he felt because it made him feel that he was a very social person?

Zhang Zian and Sihwa were facing each other, and the phone screen was facing Sihwa. He could not see what she was doing, but thought that she had not yet found Wei Kang’s name. He prompted her, “Have you found it yet? How about you let me find it instead.”

Sihwa was action-oriented, and being action-oriented meant that she would make a move and then think––or sometimes not even think at all. The contempt coming from Zhang Zian made her very angry.

Thus, without thinking, she pressed the “Dad” word.

Dialing…

Sihwa waited quietly for a short moment. She expected that the phone call would not go through; she just wanted to be mischievous for a bit to make herself happy. She did not expect that, after a few seconds, there was the sound of very old-fashioned music coming from the direction of the other bedroom, brimming with the most national style rhythm.

She and Zhang Zian turned their heads at the same time towards where the sound was coming from.

Zhang Zian did not manage to react at first. He instinctively started walking towards the noise to see who called. His father’s close friends would still call that phone sometimes during the first few months after his dad had passed away. Most of the time it was the wrong number, and after he answered, they would, in a hurry, ask about his health or mourn his father. After the first two months, however, the phone rarely rang. Even when it did ring, it was always an advertisement.

He had just taken two steps when he found that there was something not quite right. Why did it ring so coincidentally, at that moment?

Before he could recover his wits, the ringing on the phone stopped.

He was hesitant as to whether he wanted to go over to check whose phone call it was when, immediately after that, another old-fashioned, but different song, played from another direction.

His mother did not know many people––his father was the one who normally contacted people for the pet shop––and even when she was alive, there were not many phone calls. They were normally from neighbors inviting her to play cards, or to go for square dancing, or to chat. After she had passed away, her phone practically never rang.

One phone ringing could be a coincidence, but two coincidences together was definitely not a coincidence anymore.

He should have understood it earlier, but hearing the ringtones he had not heard in a long time caused him to be a little out of sorts. His heartbeat had accelerated, and he had habitually opened his mouth to shout, “Mom! You have a call!”

The words hung in his mouth for a moment before he returned to reality. He slowly closed his mouth. There was no longer a need to shout.

There were not many people who had both his parents’ phone numbers and would call them after such a long time. Besides him, there was no one else that would do it.

He finally understood. He turned around to glare at Sihwa and scolded her. “It’s you that’s calling? There are actual things for you to do, so who asked you to randomly call phone numbers? Why do you enjoy being mischievous so much?”

Before that, no matter how much trouble Sihwa caused, he would always brush it away with a smile. He would straighten his face and say a few sentences while he pretended to be angry, but he had never been really angry before. Now, he was really angry, but he was not sure as to why he was so angry.

If Fina had scolded her like that, it would be all right. The cheapskate she had always looked down on, Zhang Zian, had an attitude while he spoke to her. In the past, she definitely would have been reluctant to show any sign of weakness. She would have glared back at him, then used her shrill voice to argue loudly––but today, she did not react as she normally would have. Instead, she lowered her head and spoke haltingly. “Sor… sorry…”

Zhang Zian had originally wanted to continue reprimanding her, but who would have thought that she would so easily admit her mistake and apologize? It made him hold back whatever he had wanted to say and bottle it up. He didn’t know if he should continue reprimanding and teaching her, or if he should forgive her.

Sihwa lifted up her head slightly. Her eyes were as blue as the sea was bright as she pointed in the direction of the master bedroom and asked in a small voice, “You… you keep paying the phone bill for them?”