The Snow Leopard and the Cat

One-sentence summary: A burned-out office worker finds a cool, aloof snow leopard spirit team leader (in her student days), and from then on, her younger girlfriend spoils her rotten.

Li Xiaonan is an ordinary overworked office worker, her soul drained by the 996 grind. Her life motto: overtime, overtime? No way. Clock out, clock out? Let’s go. That is, until she runs into a girl at the laid-back bar she often visits. The girl looks young, with white hair and a chilly expression, yet she makes the entire bar fade into the background.

She meant to drown her sorrows, but only ended up with even more to worry about. Somehow, she brought a spirit (?) home with her. After a wild night, she just wanted to pull up her pants and make a run for it, only to find the other girl blocking the doorway with “evidence of the crime” and demanding, quite reasonably, that she take responsibility.

“Wait, what do you mean, a spirit? How old are you, anyway?”

“Spirits age differently from humans. And besides...” Those blue eyes swept over her coolly. “You were the one who made the first move last night.”

Only later does she learn that the “spirit student” who has latched onto her comes from a terrifyingly impressive background: a genius field agent at the Spirit Lodge, the Infin's sole disciple, leader of the strongest perception team, and widely hailed as an “all-rounder.” Cool and taciturn, with a murderous aura in public, she is clingy and bossy in private, and turns into a ruthless jealous wreck whenever a rival appears.

Faced with dangerous missions in the monster world, people approaching them with ulterior motives, and the enormous gulf between their two worlds, the ordinary office worker can only feel as if she is dreaming.

Until one rainy night, after working overtime as usual until she is on the verge of breaking down, she sees that white figure holding a black umbrella beneath her office building. Kano wraps her in a coat still warm from her own body and says in a husky voice, “Let’s go home.”

It turns out a snow leopard has earnestly carried her back to its den to raise her.