The day Wen Yan moved into the old tenement house in Yau Ma Tei, he only brought three things: a stack of old Hong Kong poetry collections, a notebook full of schedules, and a civet cat named Mo Pi.
She thought her days would be filled with the fragrance of ink and the evening breeze, until Jiang Heng, the owner of an antique shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, moved next door. He always had a jade pendant twisted between his fingertips, and his mouth was harder than the stone slabs in the old alley.
When they met for the first time, Wen Yan was squatting on the ground and cutting her nails with Mo Tuo, and the cat's claws scratched her silk nightgown to the point that the threads came apart. Jiang Heng leaned on the door frame, raised his eyebrows and smiled: "Wen Da's plan can't even handle a cat, why not just keep it as an antique?"
Wen Yan raised his head and glared at him, but he bent down to pick up the collection of poems that had been trampled by the cat. His fingertips ran across the words "Shan Yue doesn't know what's going on in his heart." His tone was casual and ambiguous: "If you love poetry so much, why don't you read 'My Fair Lady, a Gentleman is a Coward'?"
She grabbed the book of poems with her backhand, but he grabbed her wrist, and the temperature in his palm made her heart tremble. Mo Tuo took the opportunity to jump on his shoulder and shouted "Yeah" loudly. Jiang Heng froze on the spot, the arrogance on his face instantly collapsed, and he said harshly: "... This bastard cat has better eyesight than you."
Since then, daily life in the tenement building has become a constant struggle:
She made a "nail-cutting action plan" and he secretly drew cat paw prints on the plan;
When she stayed up late to revise her plan, he brought a bowl of fish-ball powder and complained, "No one will shovel poop for the cat when she's starving to death";
She sprained her foot and fell, and he carried her on his back without saying a word, but said venomously in her ear: "Wen Yan, you walk more delicately than the porcelain bottles in my shop."
In the evening breeze on the terrace, the fragrance of ink mixes with the smoke of fish eggs, and the jade pendant touches the pages of the poetry collection.
Wen Yan looked at Jiang Heng's hair that was scratched by the cat, and suddenly felt that the disrupted schedule was not that bad after all.
Jiang Heng lowered his head, looked into her smiling eyes, and his breath brushed against her ear: "Wen Yan, tell me - who of us will surrender first?"
She raised her head, with a sly look on her lips, but there was a burning light in her eyes: "Whoever admits defeat first will be shoveled by Mo Nuo for the rest of his life.
Intention: The smoke and fire in the world really soothes the annoying people