The doctor's pectoral muscles were very soft to step on, like a piece of melted butter. Imuel pressed his paws against them, quite unable to tear himself away.

He was having a great time playing when he suddenly heard the doctor laugh. "Little perverted cat."

Imuel: "!"

He was not at all.

At first, he just stood beside the doctor and pushed with his paws. Later, feeling it wasn't enough, he simply pushed off with his hind legs and laid his entire cat body on top.

The kitten was only a tiny bit big, but his weight was surprisingly not light. Bai Yu tapped his nose. "You're so heavy."

Imuel stepped down hard.

It was soft, like stepping on a marshmallow.

Kneading is an instinctive urge carved into a cat's bones. Imuel had never kneaded before, but now he was having a field day with it.

The doctor complained about the weight, but he didn't shoo him away. Instead, he turned off the light, letting the kitten nestle on his chest, and tapped the cat's furry head. "Good afternoon, little cat."

Imuel stretched out his paw pads and patted Bai Yu.

'Good afternoon, Doctor.'

Ever since he was injured, Imuel was especially afraid of the cold. He couldn't warm up the blanket on his own. Whenever he slept until the second half of the night, the blanket was always chilly. The Grand Duke would toss and turn, unable to fall asleep, yet unable to ask a servant for help due to his pride. But the kitten didn't care about all that. The doctor's blanket was exceptionally warm and very safe. Pressed against the doctor's side, Imuel quickly fell asleep.

He flicked his tail and thought to himself, 'This Mutation Period shouldn't be too hard to endure.'

It had been over a month since he turned back into a kitten. Calculating the days, the Mutation Period would be within these next two days.

Sure enough, halfway through his sleep, a familiar pain spread from his muscles, covering his entire body.

He was in a daze, his body twitching unnaturally. Cold sweat seeped through his skin, soaking the fur on his abdomen.

The Mutation Period had begun.

Imuel's body was not stable. His mother was an altered slave, presented as a tribute by a neighboring country to the previous Grand Duke. Because of her delicate beauty and mild temperament, she was favored. Unfortunately, as an unnatural product of genetic modification, she was born with defects, making her only suitable for being an ornamental plaything, not for reproduction.

Later, she gained the Grand Duke's favor and became pregnant with Imuel. The previous Grand Duke didn't look forward to this child; he merely held a spectator's mindset, wanting to see what kind of monster a union between a catwoman and a human could produce. Thus, he allowed Imuel to be born. Under these circumstances, Imuel's genetic defects were even greater and more severe. Every month, he would experience uncontrollable feline transformations, during which he would suffer immense pain.

The little dumpling beside him kept trembling, waking Bai Yu up. He scratched the kitten's chin, stroked his back, and wrapped him in the soft blanket as he picked him up, calling softly, "Dumpling? What's wrong? Are you having a nightmare?"

The kitten's whole body trembled, and a barely audible murmur came from his throat. His eyelids were heavy, his body stiff. He struggled to wake up but couldn't, evidently trapped in an extremely deep nightmare.

Imuel recalled his childhood and that dark dungeon in the Duke's Mansion.

Imuel grew up there.

Slaves were unpresentable things, and Catfolk were the most lowly kind of slaves. Although Imuel was said to be the Grand Duke's child, the Grand Duke himself didn't care. Raising the kitten was like keeping a rare pet, no different from the swans in the garden or the parrots on the perches. No one in the entire Duke's Mansion ever treated him as a proper young master.

A little plaything born from a plaything, and a plaything with genetic defects at that—on what grounds could he be the Grand Duke's child?

The previous Grand Duke was naturally romantic and promiscuous. He kept a Madam and multiple mistresses in the mansion. He had three proper sons with names and titles, all of whom were qualified to inherit the title of Duke. Imuel was the youngest, of the lowest birth, and his status was both humble and awkward. Naturally, he became the target of everyone's bullying. These people would forcefully drag him out of bed during his Mutation Period, carry him to the frozen lake, dump rotting, stinking food on the ground, and force him to lick it clean.

In winter, the lake water was freezing. With his lower abdomen pressed against the ice, it wouldn't be long before he was convulsing and shivering. Even the servants wouldn't eat the food brought to him; its sour, rotten stench was mixed with an overwhelming fishy smell.

Imuel felt humiliated and disgusted, but he had no other choice. He could only eat.

If he didn't eat it, he wouldn't have any rations for the following days either.

Later, the Duke hired a tutor for his eldest son. Imuel listened under the window, gradually learning the tricks and tactics of human society. He lay in wait for years, relying on his ability to transform into a kitten to bypass the guards and move around the Duke's Mansion. He quietly killed his older brothers, becoming the sole heir to the Duke's Mansion.

His methods could be called despicable: slow-acting poisons, framing, utilizing every extreme measure possible.

With his sons dying one after another, the previous Duke's hair turned white with worry. Unfortunately, no matter how suspicious he was, he would never suspect that a timid, cowardly kitten who was scared even when his brothers spoke loudly was the main culprit.

By then, he was old and had no further chance of producing offspring. Even though he was dissatisfied with Imuel's slave origins, he could only acknowledge his identity and establish him as the heir. Holding his nose, he covered up his mother's identity, treated him as a legitimate heir, and hired tutors to teach him etiquette.

Having a slave's child as his heir was a disgrace to the old Duke as well. Fortunately, not many people knew of Imuel's existence, and the old Duke deliberately concealed it. After a thorough purge, no one in the Duke's Mansion knew of Imuel's origins anymore.

Externally, the old Duke claimed that Imuel was an illegitimate child left outside after a one-night stand with a commoner girl.

The old Duke concocted a very long story to rationalize Imuel's identity. In the story, the old Duke was handsome, gentlemanly, gentle, and affectionate, while the commoner girl was elegant, beautiful, and well-educated. They romanced under the flowers and the moon, sharing intimate moments, and Imuel was their highly anticipated child, the proper heir to the Duke's Mansion. It was only due to the turmoil that the girl died an unnatural death, causing him to wander in destitution for so many years.

And the entrance to that pitch-black dungeon at the bottom of the lake was leveled by the Duke and covered with dirt. When another year passed and the grass grew and birds flew, the newly sprouted green plants grew vigorously. Calliandra and allamanda crisscrossed over the iron cover, and that past, just like Imuel's origins, was completely buried.

How those hazy days in the dungeon were spent, Imuel no longer remembered. The human brain has a protective mechanism that automatically blocks out overly painful memories. He had mostly forgotten his time in the basement, but those memories still lay dormant deep within his subconscious. Hidden from view on ordinary days, just a mere fragment revealed in a nightmare was enough to cause unbearable pain.

Cold, so cold.

A darkness with no end in sight, the sound of water droplets splashing overhead. The entire area was dark and damp, corners covered in moss. Even the blankets were moldy and sprouting mycelium, and every breath was filled with a dark, damp scent.

There was no sunlight, and no warmth.

In his sleep, Imuel covered his stomach with his tail.

So hungry too...

The food provided by the servants and the young masters was nowhere near enough. They fed Imuel as if they were feeding a real kitten, entirely insufficient to provide him with the energy for growth and development.

Actually, Imuel wasn't a short-legged cat. The reason his feline form still had the physique of a kitten even after he reached adulthood was due to malnutrition in his youth.

His feline form stopped developing early, so it remained frozen in that state. Fortunately, his older brothers died early too, allowing his human height to shoot up a bit. He was only slightly shorter than the doctor, preventing him from becoming truly short-legged.

In the nightmare, those long-absent injuries came knocking on his door once again. The joints between his bones ached intensely, and the entire kitten curled up into a ball. In a daze, Imuel seemed to be sleeping in that basement by the lake. His lake-blue eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, where a small vent was left, just big enough for a kitten to pass through. A single ray of sunlight was leisurely shining down.

The sunlight fell on his body.

It was very strange. That bowl-sized spot of light actually brought astonishing heat, making his abdomen feel warm. Then the sunlight expanded, and the warmth expanded too, until finally, the entire kitten became toasty warm, as if he had soaked up his fill of the sun's temperature.

Imuel's eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes.

He saw the doctor.

He was lying on the doctor's stomach, his abdomen pressed tightly against the doctor's, and heat radiated over in a steady stream. The doctor's warm hand was placed on his back, stroking his fur stroke by stroke. Those usually cold, placid eyes remarkably showed a trace of worry, seemingly pondering how to wake him up.

Seeing him wake up, Bai Yu visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

The doctor tapped the kitten's forehead and rubbed the fluffy fur on top of his head. "You're finally awake. You were trembling so severely. What did you dream of? Hmm?"

His tolerant and comforting tone made it seem as if he would actually earnestly listen to a kitten talk about the contents of its nightmare.

Imuel let out a very soft meow.

I dreamed of...

Bai Yu didn't interrupt. Instead, he stroked the kitten's back at a steady rhythm, like a form of soothing, and also as if to say, "It's okay, you speak, I'm listening."

Imuel: "Meow meow meow meow meow meow..."

He spoke fast and urgently, his words all jumbled up. It would be difficult to understand even if translated into human speech, let alone meowed out like this. To the doctor, it was merely meaningless noise.

Imuel knew the doctor couldn't understand, but he couldn't help wanting to speak.

The personnel in the Grand Duke's Mansion had been purged long ago after Imuel was established as the heir. No one knew his origins, let alone his grievances. In everyone's eyes, he was the illegitimate son the Duke raised outside, well-read, tutored, and well-bred. Although he was only an illegitimate child, he was raised pampered in the lap of luxury, noble and precious, having never suffered the slightest hardship.

Even when Imuel occasionally overheard the servants in the mansion talking, they all said that the newly appointed Grand Duke had been overly spoiled to develop such an arrogant and tyrannical temperament, unable to tolerate even the slightest speck of sand in his eyes.

Only Imuel himself knew that he wasn't delicate at all. He could sleep on ice and endure pain. The reason he acted that way was simply because he was afraid.

Because once his identity was discovered, eternal damnation lay ahead.

He was more arrogant and harder to serve than the proper young masters in the mansion, all to bury his unbearable past, to keep everyone from knowing what a lowly state he used to be in. Having acted for so long, even he himself had forgotten.

Now, in front of the doctor, using meows that the doctor couldn't understand, he finally found a place to pour out his bellyful of bitter water, recounting his deeply hidden grievances.

Good thing the doctor couldn't understand.

The doctor indeed couldn't understand, but that didn't stop him from knowing that the Platinum Dumpling was very sad right now and desperately needed comfort. So, he didn't interrupt the kitten, allowing him to meow meaninglessly. He just wrapped the soft blanket tighter around the cat and gently comforted him with his fingers.

When Imuel finally finished saying everything, Bai Yu's hand was still stroking his back, his movements gentle and soothing. Imuel lifted his head. The doctor's calm eyes were watching him mildly, without the slightest bit of impatience.

Having spoken his grievances, he didn't feel so sad anymore.

Imuel's emotions gradually calmed down. He swished his large tail, wrapped it around himself, and belatedly started feeling embarrassed.

He was a grown adult, yet he really treated himself like a kitten, standing on the doctor's legs and acting spoiled, eagerly wanting the doctor to coax him.

How embarrassing.

He raised his paws and buried his face in them.

The doctor didn't think he was embarrassing. Bai Yu just couldn't imagine what exactly he had experienced to make the Platinum Dumpling terrified even in his dreams. He brought the exhausted kitten to his face, rubbed his pink little paw pads, and asked, "Do you want to sleep a little longer, or eat something? Do you want some beef puree? There's goat's milk too, and I also bought some cat grass."

Bai Yu didn't talk much, nor was he good with words. For him, there was only one way to coax a sad kitten: feeding.

Imuel shook his head.

During the Mutation Period, his appetite also diminished. He couldn't really eat much. He merely spread his four limbs flat, his abdomen pressed tightly against the doctor's, tightly embracing the doctor in the posture of a kitten.

—He didn't want to eat, he just wanted to hug.

Strange to say, Imuel had never experienced care and affection. He had always tried his best to hide his kitten form, afraid of being discovered, afraid of being hurt. It was only after that time he fell into the water, when the wound on his abdomen caused his Mutation Period to advance and his feline form was exposed in front of the doctor, and the doctor picked him up and took him home, that he realized someone could take care of a kitten like this.

So it didn't have to be hurt or for amusement, it could just be pure care.

Since Imuel became the Grand Duke, there had been no shortage of people trying to curry favor with him. Some did it for promotions and titles, others for wealth and glory. Only the doctor cared absolutely nothing about these things. He didn't care whether Imuel was a Duke, nor did he care what identity the picked-up Platinum Dumpling had; he was simply good to him.

Good to a weak, powerless, completely useless little kitten.

A very strange feeling, but Imuel liked it very much.

So he spread out his paws, using all the strength in his body to express his wish:

—Hug.

Bai Yu chuckled.

He couldn't understand meows, but he could read the meaning of this action. Protecting the dumpling in his arms, he generously fulfilled his wish.

"Okay, hug."