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Chapter 21: The Hardships of Wandering Alone Outside

“Master!” The first morning ray cheerfully woke Shen Cheng up, followed immediately by a familiar weight on his body. Shen Cheng naturally hugged it close.

He opened his eyes, the sight of grayish-blue hair symbolizing the start of a new day for him.

It seemed like an alarm clock wasn’t needed anymore…

The alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but glancing at the time, it was currently 6:50 a.m., with ten minutes left until Shen Cheng’s set alarm.

Shaking his head, Shen Cheng struggled to sit up from bed. Cheese still clung lazily to him, rubbing her face against his chest, refusing to let go.

Shen Cheng smiled faintly, brushing Cheese’s hair as he prepared to move her aside like usual.

At that moment, Shen Cheng’s mind flashed to the Ragdoll cat girl living near the trash bin where he first encountered Cheese.

How long had it been after their initial meeting before Cheese turned into a cat girl? And how long had she wandered the West District looking for him?

Shen Cheng clearly remembered that back then, Cheese had been starving, collapsing in front of his store.

Right after she woke up, she looked for him. But how long had she been searching?

It should be known that there was a half-month gap between Shen Cheng’s first encounter with Cheese in her Little Blue Cat form and meeting her as a cat girl.

The routes in the West District of Lingshi City were extremely complex, to the point that even the residents who had lived there for some time had to carry a map to find their way home.

Even the route from that trash bin to the Cat café was incredibly intricate. Could a seemingly clueless Cheese find Shen Cheng’s Cat café in one go?

Or perhaps, did she somehow know that Shen Cheng was in that seemingly ordinary Cat café?

Thinking about this, Shen Cheng couldn’t help but softly ask in Cheese’s ear, “Cheese, when did you change from a little cat into your current form?”

Hearing this, Cheese looked up, her light-yellow eyes blinking repeatedly, and then suddenly she smiled brightly. “It was on the morning of the day after I met Master, nya!”

In other words, this silly cat had spent half a month just looking for him?

Shen Cheng’s heart ached, and this time, instead of pushing Cheese aside, he held her even tighter than usual.

“Eh, eh, eh?” Cheese, startled and nervous, stammered, “M-M-Master???”

“The days of wandering alone outside, it must have been hard, right?” Shen Cheng held Cheese tightly, his head bowed, his soft voice making Cheese freeze in place.

Soon, Shen Cheng felt the delicate body in his arms start to tremble slightly.

——Finally noticed…

Cheese felt her vision start to blur, her eyes stinging with tears welling up.

It took someone familiar only minutes to walk from that trash bin to this Cat café, but it had taken her more than ten days!

Hunger, cold, loneliness, fear—all that supported Cheese was the fading figure of Shen Cheng in her memory, getting further away and blurrier by the moment…

If not for a kind old granny taking her in, she might have died along the way.

Eventually, when hunger almost overcame her again, she finally saw that familiar figure she had longed for standing in front of a store.

The tension that had built up in her heart snapped instantly, and darkness followed right after.

There were many coincidences involved—if she hadn’t met that kind, old granny, if Cheese hadn’t fainted right in front of Light Spot Cat café, if Shen Cheng hadn’t chosen that moment to answer a phone call at the store entrance—everything could have changed. Cheese might have wandered even longer, perhaps missing Shen Cheng entirely, and might have roamed for a lifetime…

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