Epilogue 8 - Sunshine (End)

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  Hello everyone! I'm Sunshine! My second mistress gave me this name.

  As I'm just a common mutt, my first owner abandoned me when they moved away. My first home was reduced to ruins overnight. I didn't know where to go.

  On my fourth day wandering about the construction site, I bumped into my current owner. I'd never seen her before, and she smelt so strange. But she didn't look bad. She bought me ham!

  She squatted next to me and said a lot of things, but I wasn't really listening because I was so hungry. I'd been starving the whole time wandering about the construction site, hiding from the workers. They don't like dogs.

  But this person must like dogs. She came again at night with more ham. For several days in a row, she fed me every day, sometimes ham, sometimes other human food. I found that she liked talking, so this time I listened carefully.

  She would say, "Sunshine, have a good snack. If your owner didn't want you, don't be embarrassed. It's great living your own life, why keep waiting here? When you're a young dog, it's inevitable to run into a few scummy masters. You can't just hang all your hopes on one, then roll over and give up, right?"

  Wait, who's Sunshine?

  "The world outside is enormous. You should take notes from Tangerine and find someone gullible-looking. Snuggle up to them and sell your cuteness. Soften up their hearts, and they'll bring you home to raise."

  Who's Tangerine?

  "...What are you going to do when I leave in two days?"

  Where is she going?

  I watched her back fading into the distance and sunk into my thoughts. She was right. I should find someone gullible and suck up to them.

  So I caught up with her and sucked up to her.

  This was how I managed to find my new mistress and followed her home to another city. It was my first time understanding that there were other cities.

  On my first day at her new home, she took me to meet a new friend, an orange cat.

  As a fellow 'rural Chinese' animal, I was very kindly disposed toward the orange cat. I greeted him warmly and heard my mistress say, "Tangerine, I brought you a souvenir from our hometown..."

  Ah, so this was Tangerine.

  I remember Tangerine giving me a slap that first time.

  Right then, I identified him as a cat with an aloof and cold personality.

  I don't know what the relationship between the man downstairs and my mistress was, but she often took me downstairs to play with Tangerine. Tangerine was fatter than any other orange cat I had ever seen, but his eyes seemed full of wisdom. Though I could see that he was a cat that had experienced great winds and waves, when I asked how his whiskers were cut off he yowled and gave me a slap.

  It didn't take long for me to discover the relationship between my mistress and the man downstairs.

  They were lovers! Legend has it that these types of relationships specifically abuse single dogs.

  Fortunately, I am not a single dog. There is a cat beside me.

  As they were busy falling in love, I had more time to get close to Tangerine. Once, Tangerine told me about his time wandering in the outside world, a time of adventure and legend. I can sum it up in one sentence - my orange brother was a cat of few words.

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