Haze is a rather lovely character—雨中的猫—rain with a cat. Her paw pads soaked with rainwater, she treads across the rain-washed floor and leaps nimbly toward the sky. The elastic return to earth you expect never happens. The cat spreads her body in the sky, all four paws fully extended, facing this blue sphere, growing ever more distant, ever smaller, until she vanishes from sight.
This happened during a date. A date with a rather beautiful woman. After dinner, we stepped outside together. I said: "Wait here, don't move—I'll go buy two tangerines." She laughed so hard her body swayed, then pinched my middle-aged waist with a strange sensation. I felt a bloated, soft emotion, while desire for the woman grew blurred.
I took out my keys and stepped out of the umbrella to find the car. Breaking through the curtain of rain brought a feeling of sadness. Then I saw a cat. I pressed the key fob and found my car—the headlights looked beautiful in the rain, as though if I reached out and wiped the air dry, the light could regain its sharpness.
At that moment the cat let out a "miaow"—or maybe it was an "aow." I can't remember. There she was in the rain, head tilted, watching me, carefully lifting her paws to keep the water from further soaking her feet.
Then she lowered her center of gravity, shook her head, and shook the water droplets from her whiskers. She leaped toward the sky. As she receded into the distance and became a small dot, I imagined the blue sphere she must have seen. A vast blue expanse with black continents floating in it, a layer of rain like frosted glass.
I stood for a while in this unreality. Then I drove to pick up my date. On the way, I told her about it—a cat had vanished. I described in detail the paws she spread as she left the earth, a posture of serene release.
"And then she was just gone?"
She asked me, her beautiful eyes focused on infinity.
"Gone."
I can't remember if she said "oh."
After that, I never saw this woman again. Though she said she'd ask me out on the next blue-sky day.