Extra Story 4
“This cat! I swear I’m gonna beat you!”
“Stop running, damn it!”
Hearing the loud yelling, An Yuan looked up in surprise. A short-legged orange cat bolted out of the bathroom at lightning speed, with Chen Cheng right on its tail. She was only wearing an oversized shirt, her long, fair legs striding quickly as she chased after it with a mop in hand, looking furious.
“Hey! Hey! What did Naicha do this time?”
An Yuan quickly got up and blocked the raging Chen Cheng, stopping her from getting any closer to the cat.
“It knocked all my skincare products onto the floor!” Chen Cheng fumed, glaring at the cat, which had now squeezed itself under the couch, its big fluffy butt still sticking out. “How did it even jump onto the sink with such short legs?!”
Because of An Yuan’s insistence, Chen Cheng had ended up getting a cat.
A Munchkin cat with orange fur, they had named it Naicha (奶茶: Milk Tea). It was just over three months old and still needed one last round of vaccinations.
They had assumed that since its legs were so short, it wouldn’t be too energetic. But it turned out this little thing had an unstoppable will. It practically dragged its belly on the ground when walking, yet it still managed to jump around and create chaos in the house.
“Be gentle. Calm down. You’ll scare Naicha,” An Yuan tried his best to soothe Chen Cheng, knowing she was in one of her worst moods. “Didn’t you say you wanted a kid? Kids are even noisier than this.”
“Put the mop down. What if you actually hit it and it gets seriously hurt?”
Chen Cheng glared at the cat’s butt, then huffed and threw a sharp look at An Yuan. “Just give it away already! It’s driving me crazy! This is all your fault for insisting on getting a cat!”
“You loved it when we first brought it home. You followed it around all day.”
“Well, I don’t like it anymore! Everything was fine before you brought this little menace in! Look at what it did to the curtains!”
Frustrated, Chen Cheng turned her anger toward An Yuan. She stomped on his foot, then stormed off to the second bedroom. BAM! The door slammed shut, followed by a loud click as she locked it.
An Yuan grimaced, hopping on one foot to the side while rubbing the back of his head in frustration.
Most of the time, Chen Cheng was gentle and rarely got angry. Even if she was upset, a bit of coaxing and an apology would smooth things over. The only times her emotions were unstable were during her period. She’d get moody, cry unexpectedly, or completely shut down. But ever since they got the cat, her mood swings had been off the charts, even without her period.
Naicha meowed as it crawled out from under the couch, rubbing its head against An Yuan’s leg in an attempt to be cute.
“Can’t you behave a little? If you keep this up, your mom’s really gonna throw you out.”
An Yuan sighed as he scolded the cat, but the orange furball just flopped onto its side at his feet, belly up.
Seeing this, An Yuan crouched down and gave it a few belly rubs. Only to get a sharp bite in return.
“Damn it! Get lost!”
Even though the bite wasn’t hard enough to break skin, those sharp little teeth hurt way more than when a certain vixen bit him.
After shooing the cat away, An Yuan went into the bathroom and started cleaning up the mess, skincare bottles knocked over, some even shattered on the floor. Once he was done, he walked to the second bedroom door, hesitating for a moment before calling out,
“Chengzi, what do you want for dinner?”
“Nothing! Just go eat air!”
“Still mad? Why are you even mad at a cat?”
“......”
“Wife~” An Yuan said in a husky, spoiled voice. “I’m starving. You wouldn’t just let me starve, would you?”
“Ever heard of takeout?! Stop bothering me!”
An Yuan sighed, at a loss for what to say. He gave up and went back to the living room, plopping down on the couch. He shot a glare at Naicha, who was now squatting in the litter box.
This cat’s poop stinks way too much...
“Good thing I convinced her to get a cat first.”
If just a single cat had already turned the house upside down, what would happen if they had a baby? Chen Cheng’s emotions were already unstable. If she had to deal with postpartum depression and a crying infant at the same time… An Yuan didn’t even want to imagine what that would look like.
Since she was still mad and refused to cook, An Yuan had no choice but to dust off his long-forgotten cooking skills.
In his past life, he had gotten pretty good at cooking. But in this life, they mostly survived on takeout or mooched off their parents' meals. Chen Cheng would also cook two meals every two or three days, and surprisingly, she was pretty talented at it. Either she had a natural talent for it, or she had worked really hard to learn, because her food tasted way better than his.
“Guess I’ll just make some noodles...”
Muttering to himself, An Yuan grabbed a bag of dried noodles from the cabinet. He turned to open the fridge, digging through the shelves packed with beer and soft drinks, looking for ingredients to throw into the pot.
Just as he was busy cooking, he heard the sound of a door unlocking from the second bedroom.
“You cooled off already?”
Chen Cheng’s anger always disappeared as fast as it came. It hadn’t even been ten minutes.
Peeking out from the kitchen, An Yuan saw Chen Cheng looking lost, pressing her lips together as she floated into the kitchen like a ghost. She walked up behind him and gently hugged his waist, resting her head against his back.
"An Yuan..."
"Hmm? Your eyes are red."
"Am I not suited to be a mother? My temper is so bad..."
Chen Cheng buried her face against his back, feeling guilty and discouraged.
"You're usually pretty patient. Maybe you're just in a bad mood today?"
"Mm..."
"Everyone has bad days." An Yuan took her hand and gently comforted her. "I'm home with you on the weekend, and you're still feeling down?"
Chen Cheng was silent for a moment, then shook her head. "I just feel like I have no energy to do anything, like my emotions are bottled up. And then, when I saw the cat knock over my skincare products, I just snapped."
"No wonder you haven’t been flirting with me today."
"......"
"Alright, alright. Next time you're angry, just hit me instead. I can take it."
Chen Cheng playfully raised her small fists and lightly punched An Yuan's shoulder twice.
She always regretted getting angry afterward, but she just couldn’t control it in the moment...
She imagined herself losing her temper at a child, scaring them until they were trembling, and let out a helpless sigh.
She had been trying to fix her temper since her past life, but she could never change it. What was worse was that she only ever got mad at the people closest to her. Outside, she was as timid as a quail.
"Meow~"
Naicha peeked into the kitchen, meowing at them.
"She’s probably hungry. Can you feed her?" An Yuan asked.
"I'll just cook instead..."
Chen Cheng avoided looking at the cat. She still felt guilty, if she had accidentally hit it with the mop earlier, it could have at least ended up with a broken bone.
"That works too." An Yuan teased, "Actually, if we do have a kid, you can be the strict parent, and I'll be the one who spoils them. That could work, right?"
"Good cop, bad cop? No way, I don’t want to be the bad guy. The kid would just run away after college and never come home, just like I did..."
An Yuan shrugged. "How many parenting books have you read?"
"Almost finished one. The more I read, the more I feel like I won’t be a good mom. It’s so hard..." Chen Cheng sighed and nudged An Yuan aside. "Tomato and egg noodles?"
"I'll crack the eggs."
Seeing that her anger had finally faded, An Yuan let out a small sigh of relief. He went to the living room, poured some more cat food for Naicha, and quickly returned to the kitchen to whisk the eggs.
Standing at the doorway, he watched Chen Cheng, who was only wearing an oversized shirt, reveal the tops of her thighs. His eyes were drawn to what was beneath her shirt, to the tips of her big breasts, where she wasn't wearing a bra. As for her bottom half, was she also not wearing underwear?
"I'm wearing underwear."
Chen Cheng noticed his gaze and lifted her shirt slightly, revealing a pair of white cotton panties.
An Yuan turned away in disappointment. "That’s no fun. You should at least be a little shy about it."
"I don't have the energy to be shy," Chen Cheng muttered absentmindedly as she peeled the tomatoes while boiling the noodles. Then, as if lost in thought, she murmured, "An Yuan, what makes a good mom?"
"Maybe someone who makes their child feel at home? Someone they’re comfortable talking to about anything?"
Chen Cheng felt that deeply. She had never liked talking to her family about her problems. Even when she got hurt, she would rather endure it than tell her mother, afraid that she’d only get scolded. She never really felt like she belonged at home...
Lost in thought, she accidentally let the round tomato slip from her grip. The sharp kitchen knife came down and nicked her finger.
"Ah!" She let out a small gasp, quickly setting the knife aside and raising her injured hand.
An Yuan immediately dropped everything and rushed over. "Are you bleeding?"
He grabbed her left hand and guided it under the faucet to rinse the cut.
"Does it hurt? Are you okay? Where’s the band-aid?"
"It’s not that bad... I've had a really unlucky day." Chen Cheng muttered, looking dejected.
"Don't overthink it. I’m here, aren’t I?"
An Yuan quickly grabbed a band-aid and carefully wrapped it around her fingertip. Only when he saw that the bleeding had stopped did he finally relax.
Looking at Chen Cheng, who had her head down with her long hair covering half her face, he let out a helpless chuckle.
"Don't put so much pressure on yourself. You just want to have a child, why stress about being a perfect mom? No one is perfect."
"But..."
"You have me, don’t you? It’s not like I’m gone for work all month like my dad. It won’t be like a single-parent household."
Hearing that, Chen Cheng suddenly realized her father was always away, making her feel like she had grown up in a single-parent home. That was why she had unconsciously believed that raising a child was solely the mother’s responsibility... After all, her mother had raised her alone.
But An Yuan had a stable 9-to-5 job with weekends off. He had plenty of time. Even if she wasn’t perfect, she had him to fill in the gaps for her.