Seeing Yungeon looking strangely as though he were licking his lips made Yeongho uneasy. Hyung did have strong wild instincts, but he wouldn’t actually eat an animal… He maintained his human form well enough these days. And besides, that cat was a Suin.
Yeongho shook his head roughly. How many people could claim to understand what Yungeon was thinking?
Goodness, I’ve got my own problems to worry about. I’d better just mind my own business.
Yeongho shook off the stray thoughts and refocused. The car he was driving moved smoothly, passing through a darkening forest before arriving at the house.
The moment Yungeon arrived home, the people who had been looking after Doha came out and bowed deeply in greeting.
“Executive Director, you’re back!”
Yungeon sensed something vaguely troubling in their manner, but he ignored it, pulling off his necktie and looking around. The little one was far too small to spot with his eyes alone, but his sharp sense of smell quickly caught Doha’s scent.
Standing before him was Changgyu, whom he had stationed at the house just in case.
Changgyu’s gaze moved toward the space beneath the TV cabinet. Doha had squeezed himself into that narrow gap and wasn’t moving a muscle. As though he didn’t want to show even his face or a single strand of fur, he had curled even his long tail around himself and retreated into the corner.
The sight of Doha hanging there limp and listless made Yungeon’s brow furrow. He slowly raised his head and swept a look across his subordinates.
“You didn’t take care of him properly?”
“W-we didn’t do anything!”
“You didn’t frighten him? I brought only you lot on purpose because baby seems to be scared of Suin.”
The men flinched under Yungeon’s cold gaze. It was as though an icy hand had come to press down on their shoulders.
They say a Suin in human form isn’t all that different from an ordinary person, but there was always a particular kind of pressure that came with being in their presence. That’s why humans instinctively kept their distance from Suin. He in particular was among the highest-ranking predators, and his pheromones ran strong.
“Changgyu.”
“Yes, Executive Director.”
“What did our baby have to say.”
The reason he had gone out of his way to station Changgyu here was to find out what Doha was saying.
As members of the same Feline family, there were a few things Tiger and cat language had in common. That was why he had brought Changgyu — a Tiger Suin — along. Even if he couldn’t understand everything, catching fragments here and there was enough.
“…He seemed to find it suffocating here. He kept calling for his father.”
“Our baby is fond of that man. Someone who doesn’t even deserve the title of father.”
Yungeon murmured with a derisive curl of his lip. As he sneered, the tips of his canines briefly flashed between his teeth before disappearing again.
The men swallowed hard, then bowed at the waist at a wave of Yungeon’s hand and disappeared.
He had only brought them in because Doha would likely feel more at ease around humans than Suin. If that weren’t the reason, they wouldn’t have been allowed to set foot in this place at all.
“E-Executive Director…”
Changgyu opened and closed his mouth a few times. He paused briefly, considering how to refer to Doha, then continued.
“The cat has gone up to the second floor.”
The title Changgyu had settled on was the cat. He instinctively sensed that Yungeon would not like hearing someone else use the name he called him — baby. That instinct was correct.
At the sound of the cat, Yungeon gave an amused laugh and looked upward.
“He went up to the second floor?”
“Yes. I apologize.”
Only a single staircase separated the two spaces, but the second floor was his private quarters. The entire house was already thick with his pheromones, but the second floor was saturated with them in particular.
Because his pheromones ran so strong, he often found himself returning to his true form — and when he did, he spent that time on the second floor.
“How did baby react?”
“…He only had eyes for the window at the far end of the second floor.”
“Ah. That one.”
Changgyu watched Yungeon smile faintly and said nothing. He found Yungeon’s behavior just as puzzling as Yeongho did. But he simply followed. For Yungeon was as good as the head of the Tiger Clan.
“I — there is something I need to tell you.”
“What.”
“The cat has not eaten.”
Yungeon’s expression turned cold and hard.
“You should have said that first. How could you let baby go hungry.”
And at that very moment —
“Eu-ung!”
The sound of a young creature crying out in pain rang through the house. Its owner was, of course, Doha.
***
I was running, dodging the men chasing after me from behind. Some were shouting at me to pay back the money; others were giving chase crying out to catch the thieving cat.
From the time I was small, I had mostly lived in my true form — small and slight — rather than as a human. There were various reasons for that.
My mother worked, and she’d come home once it grew dark outside. That meant I had to spend my time alone in a cramped, mold-ridden single room. Even when my mother earned money, my father would take it and throw it away, so there was never anything left over, and there was no way to afford things like nursery or school.
To begin with, this society didn’t place young humans and carnivorous Suin in the same spaces. There were plenty of Suin in human society, but they were discriminated against for being fewer in number than humans.
I didn’t fully belong anywhere.
Humans feared and dreaded the large, powerful predators. They cried out that they had to be separated from the rest.
And at the same time, Suin who were carnivorous or omnivorous but not much of a physical threat to humans were looked down on in comparison to the larger predators. As if venting the fear they felt toward those predators — they discriminated as a way of taking it out on someone.
There was nothing to eat at home, and I was starving.
So I went around pretending to be a young cat. It was easy to act cute and beg people for food. But food wasn’t always something I could find.
Even among stray cats, there was territorial hostility. Some chased me off for encroaching on their turf, and there were humans who beat a wandering cat with a broom.
It hurt and it was miserable, and I cried a great deal on my own — but when my mother saw me cry, she grew sad, so I held back my tears too. As the color in my mother’s face grew darker with each passing day, I tried my hardest not to be a burden to her.
My father was making my mother’s life a misery — I couldn’t add to it.
But what if she got worn down and left me behind…
Maybe that was why I’d tried to help my father. My mother always said she didn’t need my help, that all she wanted was for me to grow up healthy — but my father said he needed me.
Doha, if you just help Papa out a little, I won’t touch Mama’s emergency money today.
Come with Papa to go meet a man.
Because my father made my mother’s life so hard. Because he hounded her over money, I tried to do whatever my father asked when he said it would earn us some.
I’d mimic a cute and peculiar-looking cat to be sold off as a household pet, or be handed over to a loan shark in place of money. Most of the time I managed to sneak away, but there were times I couldn’t escape.
What if I waited and waited and my father never came? What if I ended up permanently living as a cat, sold off far away as collateral? There were many nights I was too anxious to sleep properly. There was even a time I barely managed to escape before actually being sold off.
It was frightening and painful and exhausting and sad — but money came in from it. My father was happy. I hated every terrible thing he asked of me, and I knew full well he was family not worth having anything to do with — yet when I was alone at home and he came back, I was glad.
Even as a young child I had understood what my father’s intentions were. But the more I obliged him, the more shameless he became, and the more frequently his requests turned foul.
Hey, see that house over there? Go in and bring something back. It’s a flashy-looking place, so there’ll be plenty of valuables inside. Doha, you like shiny things. Just grab whatever looks expensive.
He’d ask me to steal things without a second thought. At first I did it without understanding what I was doing, but once I realized it was wrong, I refused. I was cursed at for it in every way imaginable, but I endured it. Then I became an adult and cut ties. But I hadn’t cut them cleanly enough — I got taken in again by a father who swore he had truly changed this time, and ended up locked in a cage after all.
Being locked in a cage wasn’t something that had happened once or twice. The circumstances were all different. There were strangers who approached me, humans who flew into a rage at me for being useless merchandise, and times I was handed over to a broker who only dealt in rare animals.
Perhaps because escape seemed impossible — in my dream, I lived through the experience all over again from when I had been caught by a broker as a very young child.
Let me out! Please, let me out!
The sound of rare-looking animals wailing from inside their cages is still vivid in my memory. Fortunately, my small body let me squeeze through the narrow gaps between the bars — but escaping from a mansion laid out like a labyrinth was another matter entirely.
Eventually my attempt to run was discovered, and I fled in every direction to avoid the hands reaching for me. Just then, I spotted a narrow gap and shoved my body into it without thinking. And in that dark room, I came face to face with a pair of yellow, gleaming eyes.
I was so startled that my eyes snapped open wide. It was just as pitch-dark as that time, but there were no gleaming eyes. Relieved, I started to get up — and smacked my head. I remembered where I had squeezed myself before falling asleep.
“Miya…”
Ow… that hurts…
It hurt enough to squeeze a few tears out. I wriggled and crawled out of the narrow gap. And then, once again, my body was lifted into the air.
