Go Back to Your Big Cat Form! Chapter 10: You Really Wanna Be My Pet?

Chapter 10: You Really Wanna Be My Pet?

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

 

The snow leopard crouched outside the bedroom door, his rounded ears twitching back and forth with every faint shift in the air. Only when he was sure that Lu Yao inside had already fallen asleep and would not come out again did Zhou Yunchen rise and head toward his own office.

Zhao Minghe delivered the divorce agreement that Lu Yao had returned. The agreement was over one hundred and fifty thousand words long; once fully printed, the paper stack was nearly three centimeters thick. The snow leopard, tail dragging, sat perched on the desk and pawed at the document as if it were a book.

But his paws were thicker than the file itself, covered in fur and far less dexterous than human fingers. After several failed attempts, instead of turning the pages he only pushed the agreement farther away.

With a dull thump, the stack slid off the desk and hit the floor. The ventilation system stirred the fallen pages, fluttering them noisily.

Zhao Minghe stood three meters back, spine straight, watching helplessly as his General clawed the files onto the floor like an irritable cat. The snow leopard withdrew his paw, stared at the scattered pages for a few seconds, then suddenly lifted his pale gray eyes to glance at Zhao Minghe.

A chill ran down Zhao Minghe’s back. Though Zhou Yunchen hadn’t spoken a word, he immediately understood, stepped forward, and picked the agreement up to place it back on the desk. When he tried to neaten the pile and close it again, a heavy paw pressed down on the edge of the papers, stopping him.

Zhao Minghe pulled his hand back, leaving the snow leopard’s paw pinning the spine of the open document. Line after line of clauses had been crossed out in black ink, clearly visible to Zhou Yunchen’s eyes. His brows furrowed. Extending his claws, he made a sharp attempt to turn the page. Zhao Minghe quickly stepped in, taking over the task of flipping for his superior.

The snow leopard’s expression was stern as his gaze swept swiftly across the contents. Zhao Minghe turned the pages with practiced speed. Nearly half the contract had been negated—every one of them items of property Zhou Yunchen had wanted to allocate to Lu Yao.

Just as he had expected, status, power, and wealth meant nothing to Lu Yao. He wanted nothing—only to end the marriage at once and leave them with no ties at all.

The snow leopard’s breathing grew deeper, heavier. Zhao Minghe dared not speak, forced to endure the pressure in silence as he flipped through page after page. The stack grew thinner, the contract nearing its end. Suddenly, a few lines of handwritten characters leapt into their vision. Zhao Minghe reflexively turned the page, only realizing too late that they had already reached the final one.

At the very bottom, Zhou Yunchen and Lu Yao’s signatures stood side by side. Agitated, the snow leopard slapped his paw down, gouging claw marks across the paper as he demanded the pages be turned back. Zhao Minghe obeyed instantly.

When Lu Yao’s handwriting reappeared in the margin, Zhou Yunchen’s pupils contracted sharply. Every expression froze on the snow leopard’s face.

I want the snow leopard. The words weren’t neatly written; Lu Yao had likely scribbled them quickly. But those few lines struck Zhou Yunchen’s calculating mind into complete paralysis.

“General… General?” Zhao Minghe had to call several times before Zhou Yunchen stirred, glancing at his aide—only to see Zhao Minghe’s conflicted expression and the way he subtly pointed behind him.

Turning, Zhou Yunchen saw the once orderly desk now in chaos—papers and pens scattered everywhere. And the culprit, his snow leopard tail, was still swishing happily, knocking more items to the floor. Tufts of fur floated in the air.

He tried to control it, but the tail seemed to have a mind of its own. Even when his brain issued the command, the long tail wagged on, betraying its excitement. With bared teeth, the snow leopard shot his tail with a murderous glare. At last it stilled, curling back around his front and obediently pinning itself under his paw like a truce flag.

Zhao Minghe had swallowed countless words, holding back. When Zhou Yunchen finally subdued the wayward tail, he ventured to ask, “General, what should we do now?”

Could they really let Lu Yao take the snow leopard home as a pet? Judging by that excited tail, he might actually be willing. But Zhou Yunchen was no mere animal. He was the General of the Federation, Commander of the Silver Halberd Fleet, carrying countless responsibilities on his shoulders. He could not simply walk away from them all.

Expression steady, the snow leopard summoned a virtual keyboard and began to type. Behind him, the long tail—escaping his earlier restraint—quietly started swaying again.

Call Professor Qian. I need to consult him.

Zhao Minghe blinked. If it were only to refuse Lu Yao’s request, the General should have asked him to find a lawyer. But asking for Qian Shan… did this mean the General was genuinely considering becoming his ex-husband’s oversized pet cat? Even to the point of not resisting the divorce itself? The snow leopard gave him a sharp glance. “Oh—oh, right away, sir.”

Professor Qian was one hundred and fifty years old, still ten years away from the Federation’s statutory retirement age. By any standard, he counted as an elder. When the General’s aide summoned him to the office in the middle of the night, his thoughts were still sluggish.

The snow leopard used typed speech to convey his words. “Lu Yao said he wants to take the snow leopard home and keep it.”

“Hm? Oh, Lu Yao, right. He’s a good kid. I know he’s always liked raising cats. Keeping cats is good, keeping cats is—wait. What did you say he wants to keep?”

“The snow leopard,” Zhou Yunchen paused, then added a pointed clarification. “Me.”

Qian Shan rubbed his bleary eyes, wondering if he was dreaming. But Zhao Minghe had already placed the divorce agreement in front of him, opened to the page where Lu Yao’s request was written in bold, unmistakable characters: I want the snow leopard.

Qian Shan blinked again. “General Zhou,” he asked at last, “does Lu Yao know that the snow leopard is you?”

Zhou Yunchen shook his head. If Lu Yao knew, he would never have said he wanted to take the snow leopard home. He continued typing. “I just think this could be a breakthrough.”

“What kind of breakthrough?”

“Do you think the mastermind who tampered with the mental-core device on the battlefield—who sent the Distant Star into the Villeau Void—would ever guess that I turned into a snow leopard?”

“Hardly.” Qian Shan’s expression sobered at once. During that pursuit, Zhou Yunchen had realized he was drawing too close to the Villeau Void and immediately tried to turn back. But the mental core lost all response, the mecha locked on course and unable to change direction.

In desperation, he had torn open the inner hull of the cockpit, trying to sever the core system and switch fully to manual control. But the influence of the Villeau civilization had already taken hold of him. His consciousness began to fade, leaving only one thought burning through him—the need to destroy the core.

When he came to, he was no longer a man at all. A great snow leopard with black-and-white fur lay bleeding across the cockpit floor. The mecha’s materials were built with extraordinary strength, but it took wounds over half his body for the snow leopard to finally shatter the berserk core.

The Distant Star’s engines went dark, and the vessel drifted silently in the lightless emptiness. Clumsily, Zhou Yunchen had crawled forward on four unfamiliar limbs and triggered the autopilot, sending the mecha back toward the Silver Halberd Fleet’s base.

The Villeau Void was a place of near-certain death. The hidden saboteur must have thought that General Zhou’s greatest wish would be peace for the galaxy, the destruction of the alien beasts, or perhaps his promotion to Grand Marshal of the Federation. That way, the power of the Villeau civilization would have trapped him in an unending dream from which he could never wake. No one would have ever imagined that General Zhou Yunchen’s truest wish was to become a great cat.

But the threat had not ended. Though he had not appeared in public, Zhou Yunchen continued issuing orders as usual. The Silver Halberd Fleet operated smoothly, with no word of its General being injured or unconscious. The saboteur, denied his aim, would almost certainly strike again.

“The hand behind this most likely comes from the Central Rose System,” Zhou Yunchen typed. “Alien beasts are active in the distant sectors, and the beast war is not the same as deep-space exploration. It threatens no one’s vested interests. But it can be turned into a chess piece.”

“Only someone in the Central Systems would have the power to move such a piece,” Qian Shan murmured.

“Exactly. That’s why I must return. I have to find out who’s orchestrating all this. But I can’t return in full view. Now, Lu Yao has given us an opening.”

Qian Shan fell silent, realizing the General had already made up his mind. To argue further was useless. Once they had reached agreement, the three discussed a few details. By the time Qian Shan finally left, the ship’s time had already struck five in the morning.

Walking out of Zhou Yunchen’s office, he found the vast stars spilling their cold light across the corridor. The human mind, perceiving such vastness, could not help but shiver at its own insignificance. The blood and fervor stirred in him by Zhou Yunchen’s account of political conspiracies slowly cooled.

Something still felt wrong. Zhou Yunchen could go back as a snow leopard, and no one would question it. But why—why insist on being Lu Yao’s snow leopard? Was he really not just… determined to be Lu Yao’s pet?

 

Lu Yao had not expected everything to proceed so smoothly. Although he still had not seen Zhou Yunchen, all of his requests had been accepted in the newly returned divorce agreement.

Once Lu Yao signed both copies, all that remained was to take them back to New Blue Star and file for divorce at the marriage registry.

The snow leopard had also been arranged. Zhao Minghe conveyed Zhou Yunchen’s instructions, saying there was no need to wait until the property division was finalized—Lu Yao could spend some time familiarizing himself with the snow leopard in advance. Once Lu Yao finished his work with the Silver Halberd Fleet and returned to New Blue Star, the General’s people would send the snow leopard directly to him.

 

Shen Zishen noticed that Chief Engineer Lu had been running to the mecha bay with increasing frequency. Almost every time he passed by, he saw Lu Yao busy at work on the Distant Star. Sometimes he tried to invite Lu Yao to dinner, only to be refused with the excuse that he was drinking nutrient solution, leaving him on the lift platform to keep adjusting parameters for the Distant Star.

In truth, Shen Zishen wasn’t even that eager for company. Left with no choice, he often brought statistics on mecha battle damage from the Silver Halberd Fleet, nervously interrupting Lu Yao’s work to ask for improvement suggestions. One evening, after all the other technicians had gone home, Shen Zishen decided to try his luck at the mecha bay. To his surprise, Lu Yao was still there. He handed him a new design draft.

At that moment, Lu Yao was adjusting the bearings and hydraulics controlling the grip of the mecha’s steel fingers—fingers wider than a helmet, yet appearing obedient under his touch.

Brown machine oil stained his hands. He skimmed the draft quickly, then used the oil on his fingertips to sketch modifications in the blank spaces before returning to the lift platform to continue working. Shen Zishen studied the draft, asked a few more questions, and then watched Lu Yao finish with the mecha’s fingers before raising the lift toward the elbow joint.

“Chief Engineer Lu!” Shen Zishen raised his voice as the distance between them grew. “Aren’t you going to rest? The Silver Halberd Fleet has enough spare mechas. The repair schedule isn’t that tight.”

Without turning, Lu Yao operated the controls. The armor at the mecha’s elbow opened, releasing a stream of white vapor. “I know. Go on and rest.” His voice was calm, making it clear he had no intention of leaving.

Shen Zishen’s footsteps faded away. The gears of the lift whirred, carrying Lu Yao higher. Cold white light spilled over both the Distant Star and the man working on it. The Silver Halberd Fleet was indeed not in urgent need of completed repairs, but by Lu Yao’s calculation, if he kept working at the earlier pace, once the other technicians finished their tasks, he would still need more time to finish repairing the Distant Star.

They would be waiting on him. That meant he would be delayed in returning—and delayed in bringing the snow leopard home. Lu Yao decided he needed to speed things up.

Author’s Note: 

Lu Yao: Leopard, my leopard…

 

 

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