ARIOCC Chapter 1

Cat Cafe

TW: Mentions of suicide

The early morning of spring was still cold, the sun rising not long ago. There were no pedestrians on the street and not even a few shops along the streets were open.

In the dim morning light, two figures, one tall and one short entered through the street entrance.

The shorter one, a large orange cat, walked while looking around at the shops and spoke in a quiet voice. “It’s just up ahead.”　

The young man beside the big cat accepted the paranormal event that cats could talk well, nodding at its words and followed the orange cat forwards.　

The young man was called Pei Shiyi. He was in no way human, nor was he a demon. He had been dead for hundreds of years and just last week swindled a corpse from its grave. As soon as he woke up, he rescued a demon that had committed suicide in front of his grave.
The demon claimed to have gone bankrupt and couldn’t help think of committing suicide. “Living antique” Pei Shiyi didn’t understand what going bankrupt was at first, but only understood after listening to the demon- wasn’t this just a loss of business?　　

The demon was called Feng Huang and was from the earliest batches of demons to enter the human world for work. Working hard for hundreds of years and saving up a sum of money, he set up a shop and opened a cat cafe. As a result, as he was born not good at business management, it did not take long for it to go bankrupt, but it also owned tens of thousands in debt. Seeing that he could not pay, he actually learned how to commit suicide from humans.

After Pei Shiyi listened to the whole story, in order to prevent his body and mind from being destroyed by Feng Huang’s chatter and lamenting, from the grave, he casually found a gold nugget the size of a man’s head and along with other treasures bought Feng Huang’s shop.

Feng Huang stopped wailing after getting money and even took the initiative to take Pei Shiyi to get an identity. After all, he had been in the human world for hundreds of years and on average, he had to re-establish his identity every few decades. He still had connections to the higher-ups and after a bit of networking, his identity was established.

So Pei Shiyi, who had just been unearthed for less than ten hours, became a modern person with a registered residence and identity. Feng Juan also took him to catch up on the modern knowledge of the human world. Pei Shiyi had a strong interest in various modern high-tech gadgets, he was even better at playing on the phone than Feng Huang.

Feng Juan felt that he had nothing more to teach and decisively went back to pack belongings. Pei Shiyi sent away the grateful Feng Huang and inexplicably took up his post as the boss.

As to why Pei Shiyi only reacted to having to open a shop now… it was of course because he had no money.
Most of the burial goods in his grave were magic weapons. Gold, silver and jade that could be exchanged for cash were given to Feng Huang, after all, the shops in this area had sky-high prices and Feng Huang saved for a few hundred years before buying it.

The money left in Pei Shiyi’s hand didn’t add up to much, and if he didn’t open a store, he had to work part-time, but the problem was that he had no record of formal education.

But a store is better than a part-time job, isn’t it?
Before seeing the cat cafe, Pei Shiyi’s mood was good, until the orange cat led him to stop in front of a cafe.

The cafe’s door was tightly closed and the sign read “Xian Chan Courtyard”. Although there was no accumulation of dust, the painted words had begun to peel. Obviously, no one had repaired it for a long time. The lights in the store were off, the tables and chairs were neatly arranged, but each table was covered in a layer of dust. Before Pei Shiyi entered, the smell of bankruptcy leaked out from the cracks in the door.

Pei Shiyi, “…”
In this supposedly very busy street, this store can be said to be unique- uniquely broken.

Pei Shiyi took a step back, took out a key and opened the door. He had just turned on the light when a series of faint meows sounded and two kittens carefully emerged.

The orange cat called out a few times and the two kittens immediately ran over to the orange cat.

The orange cat squatted in front of Pei Shiyi. “Boss, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Egg Yolk, gender male and I am an adult jin hua¹ cat, currently working at this cat cafe as the store manager. These two kittens have just started their training and have been under my care, and are now ready to receive customers.”

Its introduction was done in a serious manner, but its big face and the dense flesh on its body ruined the atmosphere.
As a fat orange cat², he fully lives up to his coat colour. He obviously wasn’t from a large cat breed, but he proved his talent for eating with his fleshy body. Moreover, he had a fat body, not a fat head. Although his face was round, he still had a cute look with clean brows.

Inexplicably, it felt like a muscular man with a loli face.

The two kittens behind Egg Yolk would make people’s eyes bright- they were actually two identical tortoiseshell kittens, with white socks on all paws. When they were together, they looked like they were carved out from the same mold. When they tilted their heads and looked at Pei Shiyi, he had an inexplicable sense of seeing a mirror image.

Pei Shiyi nodded and held out his hand with interest. “Come.”

Egg Yolk froze, carefully walked over and had his head rubbed by Pei Shiyi.
He sat dumbfounded until Pei Shiyi straightened up and did not react.

Although the other had a human body, his body exuded an aura that made cats intoxicated. Obviously, he just touched his head, but Egg Yolk felt like he had eaten a bag of catnip.

Egg Yolk walked a few steps, his body tilted and he fell at Pei Shiyi’s feet. Turning his furry belly to Pei Shiyi, he lengthened his meow.

Pei Shiyi looked down at the toe beans that Egg Yolk had just stepped on in the street with. There was still some ash stuck to it. His expression changed subtly, and he silently withdrew his hand.

Egg Yolk did not wait for him to be touched. He looked up blankly and saw that Pei Shiyi had already stood up.

The yolk collapsed on the floor, cleaning his thighs while lying down, feeling sad internally: Couldn’t the big orange cat’s fat fleshy body tempt the new boss with a heart of stone? But didn’t he just touch him?

Pei Shiyi folded his cuffs neatly in two ways, revealing the clear lines of his wrist.

He didn’t know how this cat cafe had been ravaged in the hands of the former owner, but the nooks and crannies reeked of death.

Egg Yolk thought that he was about to start cleaning and stuck behind Pei Shiyi, intended to help out as much as he could.

Pei Shiyi was brewing on the spot for a while but still couldn’t make up his mind to clean up by himself.

So he put his sleeves back down.
Pei Shiyi decided to skip this step.　　

Egg Yolk came over and expectantly said, “Boss, when are we going to reopen?”

Pei Shiyi said, “Right now, we need to renovate and hire a chef. Key thing is that we have no cats.”

Egg Yolk, “…Then, what about buying?”

Pei Shiyi smiled faintly and spread his hands, “There isn’t enough money.”

Hiring chefs and waiters required paying wages, buying cats and decorating the place would need a considerable amount of money, and the pre-opening publicity was also a mouth waiting to be fed.
After renovation, the human currency in Pei Shiyi’s hand wouldn’t be enough to buy publicity, after buying publicity there won’t be enough to hire a chef.

One person and one orange cat fell into contemplation.

The two kittens didn’t know what was happening, stumbled and fell into Egg Yolk’s fur, making a naive and innocent sound, “Meow~”

Egg Yolk almost bounced up and tremblingly said, “But they both run out of milk powder tomorrow. Milk powder and kitten food are very expensive…”
Such a small cat demon had almost no cultivation base. They were a cat demon in name but in reality, they were a slightly stronger kitten. They couldn’t at all compare to a strong, big cat like him. They had to drink milk.

Pei Shiyi, who had not yet married, but was suddenly forced to support a family, “…”
He originally thought that after his resurrection, he could just take the burial goods from the grave and live a good life, but now it seemed that he really just came to life with an inflexible brain and would actually have such a naive idea.

Can he sell the cat cafe?
Pei Shiyi looked down into the expectant eyes of Egg Yolk. The other obviously hoped that he could continue running the cat cafe.
So Pei Shiyi silently gave himself an answer: He couldn’t.

In this human-dominated society that needed certificates and academic qualifications to survive, he, as a newly resurrected mountain “man”, actually only had one path to take, which was opening the cat cafe.

Unedited

金华 – It’s a type of monster from chinese folklore, also called Kinkya-byo, but I will be leaving it as Jin Hua as Kinkya-byo just doesn’t really fit. More info here.
大橘 – We will be learning a lot of chinese cat slang! It literally translates as big orange and basically refers to fat orange cats like this:

Hello shallotnoodle is back with a new novel!!!! woooo!

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I read this novel a year ago, so the tags on novelupdates may not be accurate. As I translate this novel, please feel free to add relevant tags!

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