The Cat’s Contract: City of Nine Lives

The city divides a life into nine chances, calling it “a comfortable retirement.”

Night-school student Lin Ci encounters a black cat carrying a “shadow ledger” during her night shift in the emergency room, and discovers that her roommate has only one life left. To save her, she signs a contract: she can borrow someone’s fate once, but must repay it with a deleted truth.

Each new loan brings her closer to the vanished names, the “Tenth District” that appears only at 3:33, and the city’s budget-like logic of fate.

When the “Tenth Life” comes to light, she must choose: sacrifice herself, or let the person she loves disappear.