The Color I Am in Your Eyes

[Next book: Will Little Cats Cry Too? Blurb at the end. Please add it to your reading list!] 1. Hang Sheng has a neurotic black cat. It's always climbing onto the roof or tearing up the house, and Hang Sheng, who is already unemployed and stuck at home, is frequently driven to despair. After the cat smashed a bottle of face powder worth a thousand yuan, Hang Sheng, already furious after a fruitless job search, listed it on a secondhand marketplace for one cent. She was determined to show the world just how awful this cat was. The link had been up for less than a minute when a weirdo with an ugly-cat profile picture snapped it up: [I've paid. Waiting for you to ship it.] The cat might be bad, but it was still her precious baby. Terrified, Hang Sheng immediately said it wasn't for sale, issued a refund, and took down the link. A few days later, the cat committed another crime. Enraged and at the end of her rope, Hang Sheng put it back up for everyone to see. To make sure the same thing wouldn't happen again, she set the price at 9.99 million yuan. But the weirdo showed up again: [I've paid. Waiting for you to ship it.] Looking at all that money, unemployed Hang Sheng was tempted. "Boss, don't buy the cat. Take me home and put me to work instead. I'm a top-tier corporate workhorse, cheap and incredibly hardworking." Weirdo: "I'll consider it. Let's discuss over the phone." 2. Hang Sheng found a temporary part-time job, paying a thousand yuan a day to look after more than fifty cats and clean their litter boxes. Hang Sheng thought it was an unscrupulous cattery, but when she arrived, she realized how wrong she'd been. The owner was clearly a handsome man with a heart of gold. After all, no one else would spoil ugly cats like this. Her month-and-a-half job was almost over, and Hang Sheng couldn't help feeling a little wistful. She figured she'd never find another sweet gig with good pay and light work, an easy-on-the-eyes boss who wasn't an idiot, and coworkers who might be ugly but knew how to keep quiet. Looking at her tall, handsome temporary boss, she sighed. "I wish I could stay here with you forever." Fang Huaijun studied her face and considered it carefully for a moment before nodding. "You can." "I can what?" Hang Sheng asked, bewildered. "Don't you want to be with me?" Fang Huaijun said, completely serious. "You can." Preview Blurb Below Next book: Will Little Cats Cry Too? Please add it to your reading list! [Sharp-tongued, fussy troublemaking man x stoic, quiet, cool-headed woman who won't indulge his fussiness] 1. A young man from the capital had been exiled to Wutong Lane. The alley was too narrow for cars, so Lan Qi rode a tricycle to pick him up at the entrance. The young man took one look at the beat-up tricycle and started complaining, with a hundred criticisms ready to go. Lan Qi couldn't be bothered with him. She pedaled away without looking back, only for a rumor to spread across all of Wutong Lane that very night: she'd abandoned her husband and child. 2. After the alley's kindly volunteer family-dispute mediator spent ages trying to talk her around, Lan Qi went back and brought the young man home. The pampered young man was no more well-behaved at home. One day he complained that the bed was too hard, the next that the food was too sweet. He also grumbled about the poor soundproofing and the neighbor's low-class behavior. Every day, he dragged Lan Qi into finding a thousand things to criticize. Lan Qi ordered him to shut up. The young man obediently fell silent. The next day, he handed her a three-thousand-word open letter titled "A Condemnation of Old Man Liu's Midnight Snoring and Its Violation of His Neighbors' Mental Well-Being." Using sign language, he asked Lan Qi to help him post it on the public bulletin board in the alley. Lan Qi told him to get lost. A letter arrived from the capital. The young man's life sentence had been commuted to a fixed term, and he was free to pack up and go home. The young man really did leave. 3. In the middle of the night, sleepless Lan Qi heard quiet sobbing by the window. She opened it and caught a glimpse of the young man crouched in the corner, clutching a cat, his back shaking. She was silent for a moment before asking helplessly, "Why are you crying?" For once, the young man wasn't being sharp-tongued. He just said pitifully, "I can't bear to leave Wutong Lane." Lan Qi told him, "No one's making you leave." The young man lifted his head. In the streetlight, two lines of tears slid down his exquisite face. "You seem pretty fed up with me..." Lan Qi closed the window and went back inside, no longer looking at him. "I never said that." Having gotten the answer he wanted, the young man switched off the old radio beside him, which was still playing ambient sounds, hummed a little tune, and tossed his newly opened bottle of eye drops into the trash. Theme: Stay positive