Her Debt and Cat

Six o'clock sharp. The sky outside the window was like a piece of repeatedly washed, faded blue cloth. I woke up on time, without an alarm. Some gear inside me always meshed precisely at this hour. First, the cat. He's called Mustard, a calico whose fur looks like it's been stained by smoke. He was Zhe's. He jumped onto the bed, nuzzled my cheek with his nose, his throat rumbling like a tractor engine starting up. He never rushes me, just silently reminds me that the new day has begun unloading, whether I'm ready to sign for it or not.

I went to the kitchen to brew coffee. The beans were bought just yesterday, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, with notes of citrus and flowers, like some distant, vague promise. Zhe liked Blue Mountain; he said its flavor had a sense of order. I don't get it. For me, coffee is just a weapon against the thick drowsiness of morning.

It's been a year and three months since Zhe left. Time is strange—sometimes it crawls like a snail, other times it's like a runaway wild horse. His face in my memory is gradually becoming like an overexposed photograph: the outline remains, but the details are blurred. But what he left behind is clear, extremely clear—a debt of six hundred thousand, and his parents' eyes, filled with exhaustion and apology.

Deciding to pay off his debt wasn't an impulse. One afternoon after the funeral, the sun was bright, Zhe's mother held my hand, repeating, "I'm so sorry, truly sorry." Her hands were cold and dry, like winter branches. At that moment, I felt that if I didn't do something, something important would slip away from my life completely, like a soap bubble I failed to catch. My friends said I was crazy, asking what I was getting out of it. I couldn't say. Perhaps it was to hold onto some feeling connected to him, even if that connection was heavy as lead. Or maybe it was just my resistance against some immense void.

I work as a freelance translator, mostly handling obscure Scandinavian mystery novels. The pay isn't great, but the hours are flexible. To pay off the debt, I also took a job bartending at a jazz bar, three nights a week. The bar owner is a taciturn middle-aged man, his hair like a forgotten bird's nest, passionate only about Thelonious Monk's piano music and whiskey. He never asks much about my affairs, which makes me feel at ease.

Mustard was curled up on the sofa armrest, watching me drink coffee with the gaze of a philosopher. Sometimes I feel like he knows everything—about Zhe, about the debt, about my occasional silent tears at night. But he chooses silence, like the most tight-lipped companion.

The process of repaying the debt is as long as a monsoon season without end. Every month, I transfer most of my income to a specific account. That account is like a black hole, swallowing my time and energy. Occasionally, I receive a text message from Zhe's father. Just two simple words: "Thank you." These two words, more than any comfort, leave me with an unspeakable fatigue.

One day, a strange simile appeared in the novel I was translating: "His loneliness was like an empty stadium, glaringly lit at midnight." I stopped typing and looked out the window. The city lights spread across the night sky like the sighs of countless insomniacs. What does my loneliness look like? Maybe like Mustard's gaze—seeing through everything, yet saying nothing.

Bartending at the bar that night. A man in a trench coat sat in the corner of the bar and ordered a Rusty Nail. He looked like the kind of character who might appear in a Kafka novel, with a detached calmness in his eyes. He chatted with me intermittently, asking why I liked working here.

"For the money," I said, wiping a glass, telling the truth. "Money," he nodded thoughtfully, as if tasting a strange word. "A peculiar contract." "Contract?" "Yes," he swirled his drink. "We use it to measure loss, measure value, even measure love. But it has no meaning in itself, does it? Like the wind."

He finished his drink, paid, left a crumpled bill as a tip, and then departed as if melting into the night. I looked at the banknote, suddenly feeling he had a point. Six hundred thousand—this number felt like a huge label stuck on me, defining my recent life. But what does it really mean? Is it some kind of continuation of Zhe's life, or the price I'm paying for an irretrievable past?

Back home, Mustard was on the windowsill, watching the moon. The moon hung in the sky like a cold silver coin. I went over and sat beside him.

"Hey, Mustard," I whispered, "do you think Zhe is watching us from up there?" Mustard turned his head, his amber eyes gleaming faintly in the dark. He let out a soft "meow," as if answering, or perhaps posing a deeper question.

I rested my head against the cold glass pane. The debt was still there, like a silent mountain. Zhe's face remained blurry. But at that moment, I suddenly felt a strange sense of peace. Maybe what's important isn't paying off the debt, isn't figuring out what it's all for, but rather, like Mustard, accepting this silence, accepting this moonlight, accepting this life filled with debt and memory—both heavy and light.

I reached out and gently stroked Mustard's soft fur. He squinted comfortably, and that familiar tractor-engine purr started up again in his throat. Outside the window, the city was still noisy, but I felt as if I were inside a huge, quiet bubble. I knew that when I woke up tomorrow, life would continue—the translation work, the bar job, and that bank account constantly swallowing numbers. But it didn't matter. At least, Mustard and I were still here, guarding this residual warmth, waiting for the next sunrise, or the next Thelonious Monk tune. It felt like this too was a form of promise, an unspoken contract between me, this cat, and the world—a contract about existence.