Twenty-Fourth Meow

“Ah—”

He Yunzhou let out a big yawn, braced himself, and pressed the send button on the computer.

Seeing that the compressed package containing the contents of his painstaking work in the past few days was sent out, he breathed a sigh of relief. He leaned back slightly and stretched out lazily on the computer chair. His joints and bones accompanied his movements, making small clicks that only he could hear, and it wasn’t until then did He Yunzhou realized how stiff the muscles in his neck and lower back were.

“It hurts like hell…”

Whispering to himself in a low voice, He Yunzhou easily grabbed the wood lock oil from the computer, sprinkled it on his sore shoulders and neck quite boldly, and gently kneaded it. However, in He Yunzhou’s current position, no matter how he rubs it, the posture was also very awkward.

If there are lovers or relatives at this time, they can help pinch his shoulders—this thought quickly passed through He Yunzhou’s mind, then inexplicably, the face of the man with a pair of beautiful green eyes appeared.

But the next moment, He Yunzhou quickly erased Huo Zheng’s face from his mind. 

Rushing through the drafts all night for several days indeed lowers one’s IQ and sanity, and He Yunzhou himself doesn’t know why he thought of Huo Zheng at this time.

If it was that person, I’m afraid that if I made such a request, his whole person would be packed and thrown out the window… 

Thinking of Huo Zheng’s bad temper, He Yunzhou couldn’t help but have a faint smile on his mouth. 

Afterwards… I always feel like forgetting something…

He Yunzhou shook his somewhat heavy head and thought silently. It’s just that the lack of sleep for many days has caused a serious shortage of blood supply to his brain. After thinking about it, he couldn’t really remember anything, so He Yunzhou can only ignore it temporarily.

Nangua, who was originally curled up in a ball and lying asleep at He Yunzhou’s feet, suddenly became active after perceiving that He Yunzhou was stretching as if it knew something. 

It stood up very nimbly, put its front paws on He Yunzhou’s knees, and stared at him with bright gleaming eyes as it kept emitting mewing sounds for the purpose of begging for food.

“Ok, ok, I know. These past few days are very unhappy, right? I’ll get you something to eat later. How about canned food? Will be very happy, right?”

He Yunzhou stretched out his hand and lovingly pet Nangua’s furry head. 

However, when he stood up from his seat, He Yunzhou staged on his feet, and almost fell to the ground before him. 

“Wú…”

Fortunately, He Yunzhou held onto the table and stood in place for a while before recovering from his head spinning state. And when he wiped his face with a cold towel in the bathroom, the haggard face that emerged in the mirror was what he also expected.

Severe dark circles under his eyes were almost hanging to the corners of his mouth, and his cheeks are slightly sunken because of the three meals in the past few days, and long hours of rapid brain movement and physical exertion of drawing at the desk made He Yunzhou in just a few days, the whole person looks like something has been thinned out alive.

Sure enough, I’m not young anymore ah—

He Yunzhou looked in the mirror and couldn’t help but sighed in his heart.

Of course, He Yunzhou’s own physique is very special, as long as he doesn’t rest for a while, he will look particularly haggard and sickly. 

However, on the other hand, He Yunzhou’s workload in the past few days is indeed really heavy, and the haggard effect can only be described as shocking, and it’s not entirely because of He Yunzhou’s physique.

As for why he still stayed up late and worked for so long under this situation, he wants to desperately drive out the draft… Naturally, there is a reason. 

Just a few days ago, He Yunzhou received a call from his editor, Xiao Xi. The other party was overjoyed on the phone, and informed He Yunzhou of the heavyweight piece of good news — He is likely to be the only illustrator of the novel <God Cat>, drawing the cover and illustrations for the latest hardcover collector’s edition of the novel.

He has to say that when he heard the news, He Yunzhou almost thought Xiao Xi was joking with him. After all, <God Cat> is not that kind of ordinary popular novel — Since it was first serialized five years ago, it’s a phenomenal super-level popular novel. The author wasn’t well known before, but <God Cat> directly became a god, occupying the top of the major book sales lists. The IP’s travel movies and TV series are even more popular, which can be called monster-level money machines. In the past, some people even laughed and said that a physical novel of <God Cat> could be exchanged for the same thickness of hundred yuan bills.

This novel has been serialized intermittently for many years, and it was only some time ago that news was given that it would end this year, and a full collection set would be launched… Even He Yunzhou himself was thinking about buying a set to collect at home, and now, Xiao Xi actually told him that he would become the illustrator of this set?

“… Did you help someone draw a book before, called something like the Legend of the Silver Fox?” Xiao Xi said with a giggle on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, yes ah.”

He Yunzhou was taken aback for a moment before he remembered that several years ago when he first started in the industry, he did ignore the dissuasion of his friends and used a very low draft fee to help a novel that wasn’t well-received by everyone. A full set of illustrations and covers were carefully drawn.

The novel was very moving, but the tone was dark and melancholy, and it was difficult to read. Even the publication was self-published by the author himself at his own expense. In this way, the draft fee allocated to the illustrations and covers was naturally very sad. The covers of the several consecutive editions were ugly because there was no money to hire good artists and designs.

He Yunzhou became somewhat of a fan of this book before, but he really couldn’t bear such a book with an ugly design and drawings, so he had to find the author with a thick skin and forcibly sold his own drawings.

Back then, He Yunzhou was still a fledgling newcomer artist. Even if he didn’t have money, he could fight frantically. That whole set of drawings was painstaking and very heartfelt. In this way, the book finally has a decent cover and illustrations in the end…

It’s just that even with such a beautiful drawing, such a novel that doesn’t meet the public’s preferences is still powerless to reverse a desperate situation.

He Yunzhou heard that the novel ended up selling poorly, and later, even the author never appeared again.

In those days, He Yunzhou felt sorry for the author of that book, but with the passage of time, this matter had already been thrown to the bottom of his memory. If it hadn’t been for Xiao Xi mentioning it, He Yunzhou would have long forgotten it.

“It happened so long ago…”

“I bought the Legend of the Silver fox before Li Fu, and I really liked this set of drawings at that time. But didn’t you change your pen name later? He never knew that you were the original Yue Chuan, and this time it was only by chance he knew that it was you. At that time, he told the publisher that he specified you to draw God Cat collector’s edition.”

“Huh?” When He Yunzhou heard Xiao Xi’s muttering, he was also stunned by the bizarre plot.

Li Fu is the author of <God Cat>, and he directly assigned him. He Yunzhou could be considered to have instant success—with this remuneration, He Yunzhou will be able to live without worrying about his living expenses for at least the next three years. It’s just that if there is a loss, there is a gain. The book <God Cat> needs to catch up with the schedule, and the publisher was rushing to get the draft. The request was for He Yunzhou to drive out the preliminary character design and sketches in one breath convenient for typesetting. He Yunzhou was constantly urged by Xiao Xi and the publisher. Even if he was so tired that he was about to lose his breath, he could only hold on to draw all the drawings that should’ve been drawn for a month in one breath in a few days.

It wasn’t until the final draft was sent out just now that He Yunzhou barely breathed a sigh of relief.

And when he remembered what he had forgotten… it was already more than ten hours of drowsy sleep.

He forgot to invite Huo Zheng to a meal, apologized and explained.

“……”

After waking up, He Yunzhou rubbed the back of his head and got a bit of a headache.

He picked up his phone and tapped on Huo Zheng’s WeChat—

Before receiving Xiao Xi’s call, he was still thinking about how to apologize to Huo Zheng more naturally, so he specially made the kind of wine-soaked raisin chocolate and wanted to invite the other party to eat it.

Then, he went to rush the manuscript and completely forgot about it. Of course, Huo Zheng didn’t reply to his little invitation.

This was merely a matter of course…

He Yunzhou was not surprised by this at all.

After all, Huo Zheng and Guaji completely came out of the same mold. If you accidentally made the other party unhappy, if you couldn’t coax them several times to show warm feelings but are met with cold rebuke, the other party will not forgive you no matter what.

No, rather than being unable to forgive, it’s that you can’t find a way out.

Guaji was like this, Huo Zheng… I’m afraid is also like this.

Thinking of Huo Zheng, He Yunzhou’s fingertips seemed to touch that person’s soft silver-gray hair again.

He couldn’t help but rub his fingers, his chest becomes limp and soft because of the sudden surge of love.

No matter what, I still have to calm him down ah…

And it so happened that He Yunzhou was still thinking about how to find an excuse to continue to ask Huo Zheng downstairs for a meal, when he received a package from Xiao Xi, saying that the publisher also knew that it was a bit difficult to force He Yunzhou to work hard during this period of time, so they specially sent some local specialties as a thank you gift.

He Yunzhou opened the package and was a little surprised to find that the contents inside were very much to his liking—it was a leg of lamb that was frozen solid.

A piece of paper was pressed under the leg, which stated that the lamb leg was a genuine Yanchi sheep, suitable for making hand-held lamb.

At the end, there was a small “thank you” attached.

“I didn’t expect this person to be still so polite in private ah…”

After reading the instructions on the paper, He Yunzhou remembered the editor of the publisher, who urged the draft to swallow the whole country attitude and was also very rude. He couldn’t help but somewhat sigh with sorrow. That is, the kind of thing that urges the draft can make a good person become a devil.

The next moment, He Yunzhou threw the piece of paper into the trash, then he happily picked up his phone and sent a message to Huo Zheng.

[Have you been very busy lately? If you’re not busy, would you like to come to my house to have a meal? My friend just sent me some great local specialties oh.]

Of course, the moment he pressed the send button, He Yunzhou was still a little nervous.

It took so long to contact Huo Zheng…

Judging from that person’s extremely bad temper similar to Guaji, that person’s displeasure has probably been fermented for a long time.

He Yunzhou still remembers that he once accidentally stepped on Guaji’s tail before leaving home, and had to leave for several days before he could coax Guaji to dissipate its anger.

When he returned home after finishing his work, Guaji’s level of difficulty in coaxing was even more difficult than the time He Yunzhou accidentally kicked it out of the bed when he was sleeping before.

And if it was Huo Zheng…

But the message sounded quickly in the next second, completely dispelling the faint uneasiness at the bottom of He Yunzhou’s heart. 

[Huo Zheng: Eat.]

---

The author has something to say:

He Yunzhou: … I always feel that this person is much easier to coax than Guaji

[The heart of tender love instantly drops]