Here's the English translation, preserving all the details, emotions, tone, and exceeding the original character count as requested:
The searing scar on the back of his neck burned fiercely amidst the library's musty odor, like poorly extinguished embers lodged under his skin. Every breath came with a pinprick sharpness of pain. Fat Cat III carefully laid the scavenged copy of Stellar Financial Model Analysis onto the rust-streaked restoration table. The book's spine was worn bone-white, its corners curled into deep waves. As he gently ran his paw-pad across the yellowed pages, a familiar rough texture met his touch – the signature of his father, Liu Yao. The fountain pen had dug deep, leaving a shallow indentation on the page beneath, a silent seal that echoed in the quiet room. Suddenly, the display screen before him crackled to life, exploding in a harsh, jarring red glare. Gu Yan's icy permission freeze notification slammed into him like an invisible wall: "D-Grade Organisms: Quantum Database Access Denied."
He stared at the words for a long time, until his eyes ached, dredging up the memory of Zhao Ritian crushing his handwritten equations that night. He'd been sprawled on the grimy floormat in the warehouse, paw brushing against something hard and jagged – half of an alloy seal fragment stamped with the family crest, its edges crusted with dried, dark red blood. He never knew if it was his father's or his own. The moonlight that night had been bitterly cold, streaming through the broken window pane, turning the bloodstain on the shard into something like frozen amber.
The sneers from Genetic Optimization class rang in his ears again. Lin Wanwan, her pearl-bracelet gleaming against her paw as she covered her mouth, her voice light yet venomous: "Bankrupted genes contaminate the evolutionary chain, like moldy bread. Best tossed in the recycler early." Sunlight pouring through the porthole windows gilded her snowy fur, but her amber eyes held a viper's chill. Fat Cat suddenly heard a sharp crack. Looking down, he saw the alloy desktop clenched in his paw was spiderwebbed with fractures, his knuckles bone-white from the pressure.
"Shut up!"
The instant he broke Zhao Ritian's nose, the crisp crunch of fracturing bone was sharper than the alarms the night his family's nine billion debt imploded. Blood droplets spattered against his ginger fur like red plum blossoms on snow, stinging the scar on his neck, which pulsed violently as if something was trying to claw its way out.
The sunset stained the rooftop water tank the deep red of a scab, the silver badge on Su Wanqing's uniform sleeve glinting painfully into his eyes. His paws, hidden behind his back, were still smeared with Zhao Ritian's blood and grease from the machine shop. The confession clawing up his throat scorched the tip of his tongue: "Senior Su, I…"
The antiseptic smell from the med-pod clung to every ginger hair like a sticky film that couldn't be scrubbed off. Fat Cat III lay sprawled on the leaking air mattress in the "Wanderer's Harbor" warehouse. The deflated mattress had long lost its bounce, hissing faintly with every shift, sighing on his behalf. A dull, throbbing ache pulsed in his ribs with every inhale, like a fist slowly tightening inside him. Nerves at the base of his tail squirmed, a phantom serpent coiling and uncoiling, leaving a strange mix of numbness and itchiness. But the worst was that spot on the back of his neck. Beneath a pinpoint of skin, it felt like a grain of red-hot grit was embedded there. Every remembered slight, every humiliation from the day, made it burn silently – a wound refusing to heal, a mute mark.
[...Zzzzt... Compulsory Protection Protocol... activat-ing...]
The icy electronic voice always surfaced when he was about to break. Hallucination? Or was there something in this D-Grade husk, this walking pile of scrap classified as "defective," that hadn't been completely crushed? He rubbed his neck fiercely with his rough paw pad, scratching the skin, hoping the friction might banish the heat. Turning over, his amber eyes glowed unnervingly bright in the gloom, fixed on his treasures piled in the corner: a cracked display scavenged from a refuse station, a few dog-eared copies of Basic Financial Theory missing pages, and a battered tin box containing the fragments of the family seal. The spark of insight he'd experienced in class, like a lone ember landing on the scorched wasteland inside him – fragile as it was, ignited something new: a raw impulse to grasp something. Not for the distant nine billion credits, but so that the next time he was shoved face-first into the mud, he could look up and snarl a defiant "No".
The D-7 quadrant of Stellar University's central library became Fat Cat III's new sanctuary. Sunlight never reached this deep. The air hung thick with the dust of outdated data-slugs and the cloying sweetness of electronic pest repellent. A few quantum terminals, plastered with "OUT OF SERVICE" tags, hummed like drowsy old bees. But it had one saving grace: the anti-harassment force field. The pale blue glow cocooned him, filtering footsteps and mocking laughter into distant, indistinct noises, like sounds muffled by thick glass.
He clumsily prodded the unresponsive, ancient terminal with his paws. Its eerie blue light cast shifting patterns across his furry face. Controlling the pressure on the cold sensor plate with his paw pads was a constant struggle – press too hard and a dozen windows popped up; too light and nothing happened. The "Credit-Point Overflow - Siphon Dual-Helix Model" on the screen seemed impossibly tangled. Terms from his 'past life' – arbitrage windows, leverage dynamics, quantum encryption firewalls – buzzed on the tip of his tongue but jammed there, trapped behind some invisible barrier. Sweat slicked the fur on his neck and matted the fur on his chest. His claws gouged faint white trails into the desk surface as he wrestled with his own frustration. In a flash of anger, he slapped the terminal with his paw. The screen flickered unexpectedly. For a split-second, a phantom hologram materialized – his father, impeccably dressed in that grey suit, smiling directly at him.
"ACCESS VIOLATION! ALERT!" A harsh electronic shriek jolted him. Blood-red warning boxes flashed manically. The Lins Capital Acquisition Core Dataset (Last Decade) he'd just managed to open vanished instantly, leaving only a glaring red triangle icon like a mocking eye. "Subject #D-003, Fatty Cat the Third: Genetic Optimization Grade (D-) fails Quantum Database Security Access Standards..."
Low snickers rippled around him. Someone deliberately pitched their voice loud: "Oh, look! It's D-Fat Cat, the fraud! Even the database knows your brain doesn't compute!" Frozen in the protective blue glow, the faded yellow Stellar Financial Model Analysis felt like a branding iron in his paws. He knew this tactic – precise, vicious, stamping someone flat under the guise of rules. Only Gu Yan could do it so elegantly. Gu Yan always accused him of "chronic data fabrication," but no one knew the supposed "nine-billion debt reports," laughed at as his delusion, contained traces of the malicious short-selling that sunk his father's company – traces he'd pieced together after three sleepless nights hunched over an ancient screen in the warehouse.
Silently, he powered down the terminal. His bulky frame curled tighter inside the blue shield, resembling a discarded, worn-out rug. His claw-tip unconsciously traced the indentation of his father's signature on the page. His heart felt blocked, heavy and aching. What other dirty secrets had the Lin and Gu families buried under the weight of nine billion credits? His father's desperate, blinking red graphs in his hologram the night before the jump; Gu Yan's cold declaration at the hearing: "Procedures only recognize records"; Lin Wanwan's father's performative regret in press conferences – these shards tumbled endlessly in his mind, a snarled knot. The scar on his neck pulsed once, a physical echo of the fire in his chest.
With the quantum terminal path blocked, Fat Cat III retreated to the primal tools: paper and pen. He found sanctuary deep in the repair sector of the crumbling old academic building – an abandoned energy pipeline access shaft. The heavy scent of machine oil and rust hung thick in the air. Massive metal conduits coiled above like slumbering serpents. High above, a breach in the pipe allowed shards of dying sunlight to filter down, casting scattered, flickering gold coins on the icy metal floor. He crouched in the dimness, using the feeble, sputtering glow from his personal comm unit, sketching equations on the back of discarded flyers with a scavenged pencil stub.
Writing was torture for cat claws. The pencil skittered treacherously on the coarse paper surface, the resulting formulae wobbly as drunken ants. Complex symbols knotted together more densely than the tangle of data cables in his father's old study, making his temples pound. Sweat mingled with rust-dust, hardening into gritty mats in his ginger fur. His claw tips blistered from the pressure. Yet he dared not stop. Concepts from his forgotten past – arbitrage space calculation formulas, leverage tipping points, quantum firewall cracking logic – glimmered like shattered glass on a riverbed. Now and then, he'd dredge up a fragment, catching a fleeting glint of light. Each time he finally cracked a critical figure, the brand on his neck would warm slightly, like the first frail ray of sunshine on a winter day – weak, yet strangely grounding.
One late night, he cracked a gaping hole in the logic of a Lins Capital merger document. Excitement choked him, nearly making him cry out. The flaw was buried deep within the volatility curve of their Starlink bonds, a fuse thinner than a hair, easily overlooked. His father used to say, "Financial markets are like deep oceans. The true leviathans hide beneath the waves." That night, clutching the paper scrawled with equations, he sat in the cold pipe for hours. It felt like his father was sitting opposite him, leaning in to examine the crude "Liu Analysis Methodology," a familiar smile playing on his lips, just like when he'd taught him to calculate his first investment.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Heavy footsteps echoed from the shaft entrance, accompanied by the agonizing screech of metal-on-metal friction. Fat Cat III's heart vaulted into his throat. Zhao Ritian and his crew! He scrambled frantically to shove the precious calculations out of sight. Too late. A blinding spotlight beam – hot, sharp energy – speared down the shaft, trapping him and his papers like flies in a glare-net.
"Hah! If it isn't our 'financial prodigy'!" Zhao Ritian's booming voice rattled the shaft, dislodging flakes of rust that snowed down. He ducked inside, his alloy boots scraping harshly on the metal grate, a sound like grinding bone. Two lackeys followed, one chewing an energy bar, the other holding up a sleek recording slate. Their grins were uglier than the rust surrounding them.
Zhao snatched the papers roughly. Thick fingers flipped them dismissively. His mocking sneer swelled like a rising tide: "What the hell is this chicken scratch? D-Grade brains actually pretend to understand this stuff?" His alloy knuckle guard rasped against the paper surface, sounding like it was tearing nerves.
Fat Cat ground his teeth, watching Zhao Ritian's eyes lock onto the sheet titled "δ Critical Value Calculation - Liu Analysis Methodology (Draft)". He'd bled over that draft for three nights. Using the down-to-earth techniques his father had taught him, he'd broken the insane model into digestible steps. Clunky? Maybe. But the results rang terrifyingly true.
"Liu?" Zhao Ritian's sneer twisted into outright malice, his voice grating like rusted metal. "Still dreaming about your jumped-up deadbeat dad? Nine billion credit debt unpaid, and now cooking up a 'Liu Analysis' to scam someone else? Trash genes are trash genes! Your old man was dumb enough to flush his business down the drain, and you're too dumb to manage a D-Grade sack of meat! The Liu bloodline doesn't flow with credits, it flows with rotten slop!"
BOOM. Fat Cat felt the brand on his neck detonate. Liquid fire surged down his veins. His father's desperate, broken stare in the final holo – the raw scream of "The Lius can't lose twice!" – overlapped perfectly with Zhao Ritian's spittle-flecked, hate-filled face. Thought didn't precede action. His body ignited – the obese frame exploded forward with shocking speed, a fiery ginger projectile launched with furious weight behind it. He drove the crown of his head squarely into Zhao Ritian's nose.
[...ZZZZT—! Dignity Protocol: Primary Countermeasures Authorized!]
The cold electronic voice in his skull was instantly obliterated by the sickeningly crisp SHATTER of nasal cartilage. Zhao Ritian bellowed like a speared animal, clutching his face, blood gushing thickly through his fingers, staining his uniform crest crimson. Fat Cat stood frozen, trembling violently – not from fear, but from a terrifying surge of power. He stared at his own paws. Did he do that? He'd fought back. Really fought back. He'd hurt the bully who'd tormented him relentlessly!
The lackeys froze for stunned seconds before surging forward. Fat Cat hunched low, a deep, threatening growl rumbling from his chest. The brand still pulsed heat, yet beneath it was an astonishing, unfamiliar thrill of victory. He remembered the fierce, cornered gaze in the eyes of arena beasts his father once took him to see.
"Recorder! Roll that slagging recorder!" Zhao Ritian shrieked from the floor, spraying blood-flecked foam. "This walking landfill attacked me! I'll have him expelled! Erased from Stellar!"
Fat Cat III locked eyes with the recording slate's malevolent red light. Suddenly, a laugh burst from him. It shook his frame, tears tracing tracks through the grime and blood specks coating his ginger fur. He looked like a beast hauled freshly from primordial mud. He knew exactly what the campus forums would trumpet tomorrow. He knew Gu Yan would pronounce him "psychologically fractured." Yet, in that moment, he found he didn't care. Because, for once, he hadn't crawled into a corner and quivered.
The campus network detonated on cue. The heavily edited clip painted him as a rabid beast battering a defenseless Zhao Ritian. Gu Yan's cool, clipped tones dominated the official bulletin: "D-Grade Subject exhibits unstable psychological profile. Recommend immediate expulsion for mandatory psychiatric evaluation." Fat Cat retreated to the highest, dustiest level of the library's restoration zone, a kingdom of crumbling books and forgotten holofilm where sunlight dared not linger. Only Su Wanqing sometimes ventured here on duty.
She always wore the deep blue Student Union uniform. Her pristine, silver Discipline badge pinned precisely on her sleeve glinted like a tiny, untouchable moon. Each time she arrived to inspect the archives, Fat Cat III practically folded in on himself, shrinking into an anxious ball, paw pads surreptitiously wiping unseen oil stains off the floor. He started deliberately leaving tidier scraps of notes near her usual path, pretending they were accidental drops, catching her reaction from the corner of his eye – she never once slowed, never acknowledged them, treating them as worthless debris.
Once, summoning a near-paralyzing burst of courage, he stammered, "Senior... Senior Su, the holofilm for Colonial Economic History of the Fourth Ring... Is it... in G-sector?" His voice shook like autumn's last trembling leaf.
Su Wanqing turned. Her gaze was flat, clear as still water, revealing nothing. "H-seven shelf. Third row. Green label." Her voice was pure, crisp, cool as mountain spring water flowing over stones. It sent shivers down his spine. He'd spent hours "searching" for that film reel afterward, actually knowing exactly where it was all along. He just craved the sound of her voice.
He began sketching her name on spare paper scraps: Su Wanqing. The three characters traced again and again, the pencil lead growing blunt with repetition. The brand on his neck during these moments warmed gently, losing its usual sting. He understood the chasm between them – stardust didn't mingle with refuse. Yet, a desperate hunger pulled him towards her space. After she left, he'd drift silently to where she stood, breathing in the lingering scent – a clean, sharp blend of antiseptic and distant sunlight, fading rapidly from the musty air.
The humiliations of Genetic Optimization class cut like rusty knives. Some joker amplified his "family history": "Heard your family's nine-billion-credit hole could've bought ten colony worlds. Too bad trash genes can't hold onto anything." The wave of laughter washed over him. Fat Cat felt the alloy desk edge beneath his palm distort, yield. He only registered the sharp crack when the corner piece came away in his grip, edges now lethally sharp.
"Shut up!"
The roar ripped through the room. Utter silence descended. All eyes locked onto him. He felt like a grotesque exhibit. Glancing down at his trembling, bloodied paw, holding the twisted metal shard, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion slammed into him, draining the sudden wild strength instantly. He sank heavily back into his chair, burying his face in his folded arms. The whispers resumed behind him, icy needles piercing his back.
Late afternoon light slanted through the high arched windows of the restoration zone, casting long golden columns filled with swirling dust motes – tiny, aimless constellations. Su Wanqing finished inspecting the last row, snapped her data-pad shut, and turned to leave. Fat Cat watched her departing figure, the deep blue uniform catching the dying sun's fire, a solitary pinprick of brilliance cutting through the gloom. Abrupt terror seized him – fear that this light, too, would silently slip away, leaving him in the all-too-familiar dark.
"Su... Senior Su!" His voice cracked loudly, shattering the stillness, startling cleaning drones from their charging alcoves.
Su Wanqing stopped. She didn't turn.
Fat Cat surged to his feet. His chair crashed backwards with a thundering CRACK, shaking film canisters off nearby shelves. He stared at her rigid back. His paws clenched into agonizing fists behind him, claws sinking deep into his leathery pads until crimson welled at the pressure points. All the shame, the fierce gratitude, the messy, impossible crush – a floodgate torn open: "I... I like you!"
Time seemed to solidify. Only the dust motes drifted lazily in the shafts of fading light. Somewhere, far off in the ventilation system, a low whine started, mournful and persistent. Su Wanqing stood motionless at the top of the stairwell, the lengthening sunset stretching her shadow impossibly long, a boundary laid across the metal floor at Fat Cat's feet.
She remained silent. Her posture didn't shift by a fraction. It was as if sound itself had died before reaching her.
Fat Cat felt his body hollow out instantly. The pulsing heat in his neck vanished, replaced by an icy plunge, a cold clarity that soaked through to the bone. He looked at his dirty, clumsy paws – ingrained with stubborn grease, flakes of rust packed under his blunt claws. They were worlds apart from Su Wanqing's graceful, immaculate hands. The desperate courage that had propelled him evaporated, leaving only a vast, suffocating desert of humiliation. What gave him the right? Him? The walking D-Grade failure? His catalogue of injuries? The stench of the workshop that no cleaning cycle could erase?
The sun's last ember slid off Su Wanqing's polished shoulder insignia. Deep shadow swallowed the restoration zone. Finally, she moved. One precise step. Then another. The deep blue figure descended the stairs without a backwards glance and vanished around the corner, as if she had never been present.
Fat Cat slumped heavily to the cold floor, gazing blindly at the empty stairwell. A wounded noise, barely audible, escaped his throat – the whimper of an abandoned pup. He buried his muzzle deep into the dusty fur of his arms. The scar on the back of his neck flared again, sharp and insistent. But now it wasn't burning. It ached. A deep, hollow ache that pushed hot tears relentlessly into his tightly shut eyes.