Back in the real world, Ding Yun followed the usual procedure: submitting her mission and then writing a trial report. This time, her report was exceptionally long, filled with a massive amount of related data and experimental procedures. Fortunately, she had previously stored all that data and the process in her consciousness chip, making the writing process relatively smooth.
In just three days, she compiled a trial report exceeding eighty million characters. Then, she submitted it.
Immediately after, she began to silently pray for her next mission to be more relaxed and comfortable. Even if it involved an extremely difficult mother-in-law or unpleasant relatives, she wouldn't mind. She was by no means a studious academic prodigy. She was, in fact, a slacker. Spending all day in the laboratory had worn her out.
After finishing her prayer, Ding Yun clicked again to draw a golden finger and a mission. She hadn't seen the mission details yet, but the golden finger had already appeared.
[Meow Star Communicator]
"What is this? 'Meow Star Communicator.' The name doesn't sound like it's meant for humans. And can a communicator even be used as a golden finger? Oh well, if the golden finger is useless, I can just rely on myself. That's how it is for the unlucky."
Despite her confusion and the feeling that this golden finger might be unreliable, Ding Yun accepted it quickly since she knew that trial golden fingers couldn't be changed. She then clicked to enter the mission world.
---
[Client: Fu Shiyun
Mission Request: I've had enough of this world. In my next life, I don't want to be human anymore. I want to be a cat with a devoted, lifelong owner who takes excellent care of me.
Mission Reward: 10 Soul Points]
After reading the mission request, Ding Yun was utterly bewildered. What kind of request was this? Not wanting to be human in the next life, wanting to be a cat? Was she some kind of goddess who could control reincarnation?
Regardless of her confusion, Ding Yun first merged with the current body and sorted through the original owner's memories.
The original owner was born into a very large family. By "large," she didn't mean wealthy, but simply numerous. Compared to a typical family of three, theirs was massive, with a total of thirteen people across two generations, not counting grandparents or other extended relatives.
The original owner's mother spent the first ten years of her marriage giving birth to seven daughters. Even though their family was on the brink of financial ruin and homelessness due to penalties, they continued to have children, determined to have a son. However, in her eighth pregnancy, the original owner's mother tried many folk remedies and fertility drugs. While she eventually gave birth to a son, it's possible that the multitude of medications taken during pregnancy affected him. He was born with a congenital hearing impairment and mutism, as well as deformities in his fingers and left leg.
Her parents were not discouraged and continued to try. After having two more daughters, they finally managed to give birth to a son – a healthy one. Nine daughters, two sons, and the parents made up the thirteen people across two generations. When giving birth to the youngest son, the original owner's mother was only thirty-seven years old, a testament to her incredible resilience, like a super-powered ironwoman compared to a draft horse.
In such a family situation, the original owner, as the fifth daughter, had no easy life. She only survived without starving thanks to the local authorities who provided subsidies to the family, fearing that so many children would starve.
Once the original owner could speak and had some manual dexterity, she began helping with household chores and taking care of her younger sisters and brothers. As for schooling, she attended for a few years, barely completing her nine years of compulsory education. This was only because the village head threatened her parents, stating that if they didn't send their children to school, their subsidies would be cut. Only then did her parents reluctantly send their children to school for the so-called compulsory education.
However, after school, their parents would have them help with chores and assemble paper boxes for a small income, leaving no time for studying or homework. Consequently, their academic performance was mediocre. There aren't that many geniuses in the world. Most people, with a basic education that is average or even poor, would be lucky to learn most of the textbook material, let alone have time for extracurriculars like advanced math or language classes.
With average grades, no one came to their home to encourage them or offer scholarships for high school. Thus, the normal fate for her sisters, after finishing junior high, was to be sent to work in factories by their parents, work for a couple of years, and then be married off, with the family collecting a bride price. This was the expected path for her older sisters.
But the original owner was unwilling to accept this fate. Her academic performance had never been good, so she essentially gave up on it. In her free time, she borrowed romance, martial arts, and fantasy novels from her classmates. While these novels weren't masterpieces, and many were nonsensical, some could even lead impressionable young girls with already underdeveloped values to harbor unrealistic fantasies. However, reading these novels wasn't entirely without benefit; some did broaden horizons. For instance, they revealed that the world wasn't just their small corner, that not everyone had to drop out of school at fourteen or fifteen to work in a factory, nor did everyone have to be married off by their parents with a bride price at sixteen or seventeen. Women had other possibilities. They could become Cinderella figures and marry into wealth, or a palace maid could become an empress, or even a grand empress dowager who married a new emperor. There was even the possibility of escaping family and eloping. Although the content of these novels wasn't entirely realistic, they were certainly exciting to read. Most importantly, these novels indirectly fueled the original owner's desire not to follow in her sisters' footsteps, leaving school at the age of marriage to work in a factory, handing over all her earnings to the family, and then getting married.
With these thoughts in mind, the original owner began preparing in her third year of junior high to escape her family. Although she had no money or identity card, she was prepared to die outside rather than stay at home and be controlled. This belief sustained her. Over that year, she put in every effort in her spare time, collecting trash, taking on odd jobs, and doing whatever else she could, to save eight hundred to a thousand yuan for her escape fund.
After graduation, she pretended to comply with her parents' wishes. Like her sisters, she accompanied her parents to get her ID card. According to the usual process, after the ID card was issued, her parents would keep it, and she would start working in a factory, with her bank cards and wages also managed by her parents until her marriage. What the original owner did was, on the day she received her ID card, find an excuse to keep it with her. Then, she quickly feigned needing to use the restroom and escaped by taxi from a secluded spot. She went to the train station and took a bus to another city.
What followed was the original owner's survival log in a foreign place. Despite her young age, she was cautious. Moreover, she didn't aim for unrealistic aspirations and quickly found a safe job as a waitress in a food street area. The job included meals and accommodation. The salary wasn't high, but the included food and lodging were a significant benefit. Having done housework since childhood, the original owner might not have been an excellent cook, but she was perfectly capable of serving dishes and washing bowls. She passed the assessment smoothly and became a formal employee at the small restaurant, living in a small compartment above the kitchen. Although small, it was habitable. The only downside was having to go downstairs to wash up and use the toilet. However, as long as she wasn't homeless, the original owner was quite satisfied.
She worked at this job for two years. During this time, she never stopped trying to improve herself or look for a better job. Then, she moved into factory work. She had no choice; her daily work as a waitress was already demanding. She slept soundly the moment her head hit the pillow, waking up to more tasks. She had no time to study. Without the necessary skills, the only way to earn a slightly higher salary was to work in a factory. The waitress salary was too low, less than three thousand yuan a month. Factory assembly line work wasn't necessarily more tiring than being a waitress, but the salary was six thousand yuan a month, with more possible if she worked overtime. It was said that the most diligent female workers could earn over ten thousand a month. How could the original owner not be tempted?
If the restaurant owner hadn't repeatedly asked her to stay, saying he couldn't find a replacement waitress, and if she hadn't agreed, thinking of him as her first employer, she would have quit much earlier. But after the owner stalled for over half a year, the original owner, no matter how naive, realized he was just placating her and had no intention of letting her resign. So, she unceremoniously quit. It took considerable effort to finally retrieve her salary for the past half-month, and then she entered the factory.
Although tiring, the salary was high. She worked twelve hours a day, earning over six thousand yuan a month. This was already very satisfying for the original owner. After all, it was double her previous salary. As for working twelve hours a day, when she was a waitress, if it wasn't for the slow periods during the day, her actual working hours were more than twelve. She had to wake up before six in the morning and worked until past eleven, sometimes even midnight, before sleeping. While she could sleep at the restaurant for free, she also had to get up early to clean and open the shop, and she was responsible for cleaning and closing up at night. Therefore, the working hours in the factory were acceptable to the original owner. She didn't find it difficult and sometimes, when things were slow or she wanted to earn more, she would actively work overtime, putting in fourteen to sixteen hours a day.
Each month, she was extremely frugal. For accommodation, she rented a bed space. For food, she ate the simplest, most basic meals, rarely eating meat. She tried to keep her monthly expenses around six to seven hundred yuan. For clothing, apart from buying cheap underwear, she mostly wore her work uniform. In short, she saved wherever she could. The money saved was accumulated to pay for a down payment on a house. She wanted to buy a house and have a home.
She could save at least five thousand yuan each month, and in months with more overtime, even seven to eight thousand yuan. Annually, she saved around seventy to eighty thousand yuan. It was this extreme frugality that allowed her to buy a house with a thirty-thousand-yuan down payment before housing prices completely skyrocketed. Her monthly mortgage payment was five thousand yuan, with a twenty-year repayment period. That year, she had been working in the factory for five years. She was twenty-two years old and suffering from malnutrition.
She had bought a house, but she had almost no money left, so she couldn't afford any renovations. She had to live in the unfinished shell of a house temporarily and slowly renovate it herself, using the little money she could spare from her monthly mortgage payments. However, working fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and then squeezing in time for commuting, and doing renovations on her house, undoubtedly took a severe toll on her body. It was manageable when she was young, but after five or six years of this lifestyle, she truly felt the strain.
Coupled with the fact that many of her peers were already married, even without external pressure, she started to feel anxious. Fortunately, by then, her house was mostly renovated. While not luxurious, it was no longer an unfinished shell. So, she began using the time she had previously set aside for renovations to go on blind dates.
However, the blind dating process was unsuccessful. Some found her education too low, others complained she was nearing thirty, and some disliked her job. The most outrageous ones even proposed a trial period: if she could get pregnant and give birth to a boy, they would marry her; otherwise, they would break up. In short, she encountered all sorts of bizarre individuals.
Furthermore, the original owner's house became a source of conflict in her blind dates. Some men suggested she sell her house, save the money, and use it for the child's education fund. Others felt that her house was pre-marital property and that with her salary mostly going towards the mortgage, it wouldn't be cost-effective for them to support the entire family alone. Even more absurdly, some wanted their names added to her property deed, offering to help with the mortgage payments in a condescending manner. The accumulated stress from ten years in the factory paled in comparison to the stress she experienced in those six months of blind dating. After each blind date, she had to spend a considerable amount of time "virtually" interacting with cats to recover, fearing she would be so angered that she would die.
If it were only this, it might have been manageable. The original owner probably wouldn't have died from sheer anger. However, six months prior, due to the impact of a global financial crisis, their factory went bankrupt, and they were all laid off. The layoff itself wasn't the main issue; the problem was her five-thousand-yuan monthly mortgage. Over the years, due to the mortgage, she hadn't saved much money. Her savings wouldn't even cover a few months of mortgage payments if she didn't eat or drink. This significantly increased her pressure.
During the day, she desperately searched for work. At night, she was so worried that she couldn't sleep, and her hair fell out in clumps. She could only fall asleep with the help of sedatives. Meanwhile, her downstairs neighbor, who hadn't renovated for years, suddenly started construction. Upstairs, a family with strained mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships moved in, along with a rambunctious child. Every night, they either argued or made noise, simply by stomping their feet or walking around. These events further agitated the original owner. The immense mental pressure led to psychological problems. Combined with the difficulty of finding work and her inability to rent out her spare room to alleviate financial stress, the original owner's mental state finally broke down, and she ingested a bottle of sedatives.
A single issue or two or three would likely have been manageable for the original owner. However, with so many problems accumulating, it was difficult for anyone to bear. If she had family support, friends, or comfort from loved ones, she might have been able to overcome it. But the original owner had no family to help her, and her thrifty nature, where she tried to make every penny count, made it unlikely for her to have many friends. Therefore, the original owner's choice could be considered unexpected yet logical.
As for the original owner's dying wish to not be human and instead be a pet cat, it stemmed from watching a video that day. She saw a pet cat eating beef and salmon – delicacies she could barely afford to buy for herself, or even eat. Overwhelmed by sadness, she felt that despite working so hard and suffering so much, her life was still miserable. What was the meaning of such a life? It would be better to have a shorter lifespan and be a pet cat. And so, that's how it happened.