Translator: deathbutlowkey

Editor: Mimishijie

The General’s Cat (3)

---

Shen Zhifan was startled, but hurriedly stabilised the soft kitty that was now in his arms.

Off to the side, Shen Zhirou was quite sour. “Its fur may look soft, but it probably isn’t that great anyways…”

Although she said this, she couldn’t help but let her hand inch closer towards that lump of snow-white fur, but when she’d almost reached it, she was mercilessly slapped away by Shen Zhifan.

“It doesn’t like your touch.”

Shen Zhifan smiled from the corner of his mouth, looking at the half-drooping eyes of the kitty in his hold with an expression of gentle pampering. The cat yawned, trying to find a comfortable position, and raised its chin at Shen Zhirou provocatively.

Shen Zhirou glared, “...” This cat really was evil, alright?

Shen Zhirou, who couldn’t touch the cat, could only continue being sour, “You should quickly go return it, in case that scary General starts to think that you’ve stolen his wife and his cat!”

However, by the time she realised what was happening, Shen Zhifan was already carrying the cat upstairs.

“...”

Shen Zhifan may not have had a lot of time to pay attention to her in the past, but he’d always spoiled her!

Right now it had totally flipped, flipped!

She jumped about in rage. How could she continue living like this!
Shen Zhifan felt that this cat had unusual intelligence. It seemed like it had a human soul, and with it just looking at him…he felt like in the next moment, it would start talking.

He stroked the cat’s silky soft back, wondering if he should get it some food. However, this cat that had been particularly aloof towards Shen Zhirou, was very sticky to him. It nestled in his arms, unwilling to come out.

He couldn’t help but laugh and lowered his head to plant a little kiss on its furry forehead, thinking that it was exceptionally cute.

Regardless, he still had more troublesome things to deal with. He looked around, then looked at the desk, walking over to it with the intent of using the computer to look up things.

However…Shen Zhifan looked at the latest model of the electronic device with a bit of distress. He examined it for ten minutes, yet still couldn’t find the power button.

Forget a the new model, even if it was an older one, Shen Zhifan hadn’t really come into contact with these things. On a rural planet which was flooded with metal storms, one couldn’t simply access these things. Although the schools provided some, they were clearly of a different series from the one on the table.

Just as Shen Zhifan sighed and thought of going downstairs to ask Shen Zhirou to help, a cat’s claw suddenly appeared in his line of sight. After it fiddled around for a few moments, the computer was poked and powered on smoothly.

Shen Zhifan stared, in a daze. Thinking it was somewhat laughable, he grasped the cat’s paw.

The pad of the cat’s paw was a particularly cute shade of pink – Shen Zhifan thought it was unbearably adorable. It felt cool and soft to the touch, and the fur on the outside was even more so. Shen Zhifan was engrossed in rubbing the cat’s paw, unable to stop kneading it until he’d almost forgotten what he was actually supposed to be doing.

He only reacted when an electronic female voice sounded.

“Scanning iris.”

“Verification successful.”

“Welcome back, master.”

Although it was an electronic female voice, it was still quite pleasant to listen to. Shen Zhifan was delighted. These smart technology settings seemed to be able to help him quickly familiarise himself better.

A large screen of light appeared before him. He couldn’t help but try to touch the virtual screen, but he could only grasp at nothingness.

Shen Zhifan pondered for a moment, and finally inputted his own name directly into the search box.

Unexpectedly, there wasn’t much news about him. In this information age, if it were a rather famous person, lots of information would have been dredged up.

However, there wasn’t a lot about Shen Zhifan. For example, there was practically no information about which planet he was born on or which school he’d gone to. There were, however, rows upon rows with information about his rankings in the league and popularity ranking pages.

Shen Zhifan clicked into one of the popularity pages. The homepage was just a photo of him.

The expression of the youth in the photo was completely indifferent, and he wasn’t turned towards the camera. Although he wasn’t wearing a mask, his head was turned to the side, showing only a third of his exquisitely beautiful profile. He was clearly avoiding having his picture taken – this was a sneak shot.

Clicking on other pictures, they were practically all secretly taken photos. Shen Zhifan searched up the reason, and sure enough, there were many fans crying and begging for high-quality photos. However, the reply below only said that Shen Zhifan never had portraits taken and never endorsed any brands, so there were no high-definition frontal shots of him.

The clearest picture was only of the time when he attended the competition.

Scrolling down, the first thread read, “Congratulations to KK for winning first place in the popularity rankings! We will love you forever!”

KK was the fans’ nickname for Shen Zhifan because the ID that he used for competing was KKK30474, shortened to KK. Contrary to expectations, most fans didn’t mention his real name.
Shen Zhifan also discovered that a lot of fans were discussing why he would choose KKK30474 as his own ID. Shen Zhifan thought about it and couldn’t help but laugh.

The fangirls’ guesses were truly fantastic oddities of every description. Suddenly having so many fans, Shen Zhifan felt it was refreshing. Idle and without anything else to do, he created an ID and wrote a reply at the bottom of the forum.

Registering a new ID needed a nickname. As he was thinking, his hand happened to knead the cat’s paw again, so he just inputted the name Catclaw30474.

“Catclaw30474: Actually, after typing in the characters KKK, he realized that it was already taken. In a fit of anger, he added in a bunch of numbers.”

As soon as he refreshed the page, he found that there was already a reply.

KK’sLittleWife: Hahahahaha dying laughing, my husband is such an aloof male god.  I would never believe that my husband is so stupid! There must be a deeper meaning!!

The corner of his mouth rose. He didn’t plan to respond, calmly watching as the fangirls chattered about it.

After searching a bit more, Shen Zhifan finally stopped. In his mind, he’d gotten an inkling of what his future self was like.

Indifferent, reserved, low-profile.

This was the first point. Although Shen Zhifan bickered and bantered freely with Shen Zhirou, the number of genuine words he spoke to strangers were few. Besides, after all those years had passed...as well as the things he’d experienced, it was understandable that his temperament became a little colder.

Furthermore, for the second point, he’d found that Shen Zhifan never did advertisements or any interviews. Even for official activities, he rarely showed his face. He was a celebrity of the mech league, but a mech league celebrity was still a celebrity. Without participating in commercial activities he would have no marketable value, but even without that, he was still number one in popularity.

For the mech league ranking, when it came to accumulated points, he actually wasn’t number one. Even though his records were pretty good, he was still a rookie after all, one who’d only been participating for just under a year. Though his win frequency was quite high, overall his performance couldn’t beat those of his seniors.
That is to say...it was still because of his face.

Shen Zhifan thought for a while, eventually coming to this conclusion. Mechs were the hardest to start with, and even harder to master. The majority of mech league celebrities had only passable appearances, so of course, Shen Zhifan with his sound foundation, high attractiveness, combining both performance records and a face that launched a thousand ships, he was simply a crane in a flock of chickens.

He was currently the most anticipated rookie, ranking 19th in the Hall of Fame. The only ones more popular in the Hall of Fame were those who had already retired a while ago. This ranking was already considered pretty good for a newcomer

Shen Zhifan stretched. He’d originally planned to look up more information about the mech league but unfortunately, the sky had already darkened.

His hand was still subconsciously rubbing the cat’s paw, although the kitty had already pillowed itself on his arm and fallen asleep, curled into a ball. Its little face seemed both beautiful and slightly dumb.

“How are you so pretty?” Shen Zhifan looked for a while, his heart couldn’t help but like it. He softly asked, “Are you the male god’s cat?”

The cat who’d fallen asleep naturally didn’t answer him. Even if it wasn’t asleep, it still wouldn’t answer him.

At the thought of Yan Shuo, Shen Zhifan’s heartbeat sped up a little. He thought of their afternoon meeting, the other man’s gentlemanly “I will faithfully attend to it”, and how, in the future, they will be neighbours. It really made his heart’s desires hard to suppress.

He should take this chance to send the cat back. If it was the General’s cat then they could take this chance to become closer. If it was not, he could still take this opportunity to get that autograph.

Ah, he really was a brilliant strategist.

Thinking up to that point, Shen Zhifan itched to rush over, but when confronted with the male god, he always felt somewhat shy. Shen Zhifan looked at his casual, stay-at-home clothes, once again recalling the male god looking simply radiant in his military uniform this afternoon. He felt unworthy of the male god.

He gently lowered the sleeping kitty and opened the wardrobe to the side.
And so the kitty woke up to such a scene.

A white shirt was casually draped over the youth’s beautiful triangular back, scandalously revealing more than half of his smooth shoulders. The other seemed unsatisfied with the shirt and soon took it off. As his range of motion was quite wide, a beautiful mermaid line was slightly exposed under his tight, lean abdomen...

Shen Zhifan changed for a while, unsatisfied with all of them. Suddenly, he heard a weak ‘meow’ sound. As he turned his head...he was horrified.

“Kitty, where are you hurt?”

The kitty crooked its head. It hadn’t been aware, but as it carefully pawed at its own fluffy face...it really was met with a faceful of its bloody nose.

...as he got older, he - he really couldn’t control himself.

End of Chapter 6
---

T/N: Don’t ask me why it’s KKK. I have no idea.

Also, I’ll be travelling for a while so updates will come every two weeks from now on! :)))
---