The Insecure Cat and the Awkward Big Dog

Happy ending, two male leads, an irritable dominant × an insecure submissive

His little sun can make things cold

Lu Zaizhuo: light on fire

Lin Miao: A treetop piercing the forest mist, catching the light of day

A photocopy of the obituary from Lu Zaizhuo’s funeral. Those cold lines of type were like poison-tipped nails, every one of them: “Lu Zaizhuo died after treatment failed to save him from his severe injuries.”

Then came a date I refused to accept, yet could never erase:

[April 20, 1994–April 19, 2022]

It declared the truth: The person who had once stirred up raging storms in my life, whose name carried flames but whose eyes were clearer than a stream in early spring, who had clumsily wiped the rain from my face with fingertips burning hot... had truly gone out forever, the day before his twenty-eighth birthday.

Ordinary sheets of A4 paper, bearing an immeasurable weight. Each letter stubbornly began with the same name:

“Zaizhuo”

They were never sent. Like my heart, wrapped layer upon layer until it rusted shut, they had never truly reached him.

I pushed open the door to memory, and suddenly a deafening, ceaseless sound of summer flooded my ears...

Cicadas.