Thinking of the glittering neon signs, Mio padded his way toward the city. He spotted a truck just starting its engine and ran straight over, climbing into the cargo bed. Lucky. It seemed like he’d be able to get much farther than on foot. A little chilly, Mio wound his gray tail around his paws like a scarf and wrapped them snugly, then lifted his head with satisfaction.
“Mya-ang.”
Opening his triangular pink mouth, he happened to make eye contact with a cat sitting on a dry tree nearby. They knew each other. The old cat spoke to Mio.
[If you go too far, you won’t be able to come back.]
[I can come back! I know how to read!]
Even if he’d never gone outside, he knew the address of the house. He’d memorized all his brothers’ numbers too, so there was no way Mio couldn’t find his way home.
The moment he replied, the truck set off. His body felt like it lifted — bwoong — and he pressed firm into his soft paw pads and haunches as he turned his head. As Mio moved forward with time, a lazy breeze came drifting over and tickled his cat whiskers.
The scenery shifting by the moment, and the wind stinging his eyes.
Glittering streetlights, green road signs, the glow of houses far in the distance.
Cars racing through the dark.
All of it was something he was experiencing for the very first time.
Just then. The truck came to a sudden stop, and Mio’s small body tumbled and rolled — thunk — slamming into the corner of the cargo bed.
Ow! That hurt!
Mio, who had declared that a human who turned into a cat doesn’t sweat the small stuff, bristled indignantly and sprang to his feet, baring his pitiful little fangs. But in that brief moment, neon signs and towering buildings had appeared right before his eyes.
Neon signs!
The dizzying, blazing lights and blaring music that had only ever lived in his imagination seized Mio’s feet entirely. All five senses stood on sharp, electric end. Mio leapt down quickly from under the truck and walked through the city night. The texture of this damp, uneven asphalt beneath his paws, and the smell. Mio breathed the scent of freedom deep into his chest. The public commons that had been denied to him alone now seeped into his nostrils too.
The dirty, unorderly streets weren’t particularly glamorous, but they were beautiful enough — and the dozens of alleyways that looked like a maze were charming. He felt as though everything before him was offering him a chance.
That you can choose as much as you like. That instead of circling the same space over and over, you can step over any wall your feet happen to reach.
Mio turned his head and surveyed the surroundings carefully. People of every different shape kept walking to and fro without end. As cat Mio walked the pavement with his chin lifted haughtily, someone said, “Oh my god, he’s so cute.”
Let’s go a little farther. There are usually cats in places like this.
Turning toward a quiet alley to find the city cats, he found strange, pale smoke rising up into the sky there.
Crackle-crackle —
Just then, a black cat came darting frantically out from between the alleyways. Its tail was puffed out and its nose scrunched up in extreme discomfort. Mio tilted his head and stared — the cat’s face turned toward him, and the creature cried “Kyaaang!” with blazing yellow eyes.
[Watch out! There’s an absolutely terrible smell!]
The black cat said this and bolted off behind Mio. Just what kind of smell would make a cat react with that level of horror? If anything, it made him curious. Watching the cat vanish in a flash, Mio’s attention poured into the alley where smoke was slowly curling up.
A terrible smell. A smell that sent even the rough cats of the city fleeing in horror. Instinct and curiosity, stronger than common sense, led Mio into the dark alley.
That day was a starlit night bright enough to be seen even in this light-filled city — a night that held romance within it. And it was also the fateful meeting that would shake Chae Mio’s entire life. Mio padded his way along and, deep inside an alley where no light reached, in the middle of that beautiful city, he found a man collapsed and bleeding.
What the……?
Why is he lying here. The way he was frozen still made him look just like a corpse. Mio startled and bounced up from the ground in a flurry, then crouched low and crept closer. His tiny pink nose twitches. Mio tilted his head to one side.
What is this smell……
Mixed in between the smell of blood was another smell. He didn’t know why, but it was a smell that, if you just quietly breathed it in, made you feel giddy and lifted your spirits.
Was this the terrible smell the black cat mentioned earlier?
Hmm. It didn’t feel terrible to Mio at all. Usually an unpleasant smell was musty and sticky and the kind that made you want to gag. But the smell coming off this man was fresh — almost like the faint scent you’d get if you buried your nose into the trunk of a tree.
Mmmmm……
He barely held his dizzying, scent-drunk mind together and opened his eyes wide. The man asleep on the ground seemed to glow even in the shadows. No — as if he had stolen all the color from his surroundings, he alone was strikingly vivid.
Because of that bewitching face, Mio dropped even his guard and drifted toward him as if enchanted. Up close, the man’s features were ideally handsome — as if drawn. Even his disheveled hair felt like a deliberate device for beauty.
A face you couldn’t look away from, and a large frame. And that incongruous, fresh grassy smell. It wasn’t difficult at all to figure out who this man, collapsed out of nowhere in a corner of an alley, really was.
An alpha.
The inexplicable grassy smell was likely not his natural body scent but his pheromones. In the world, beyond the distinction of woman and man, there existed another division — alpha and beta. Sex and secondary gender. Most of society was made up of ordinary betas, but the ones who became their leaders were a small number of alphas. Everyone admired alphas. Someone very close to Mio was no different.
What to do. Mio stepped back one pace, and a heavy voice came back to life in his ear, vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
‘It would have been good if you were an alpha……’
Recalling his father’s voice, Mio tensed his trembling body and forced himself to stand firm. Don’t think about it. Today is a happy day.
Still — of all things, a bleeding, collapsed alpha, and Mio himself keeping watch alone by his side. He felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. The cat, who had been staring quietly at the man’s face for a moment, shook his head. First, confirm whether he’s alive. The man appeared to be seriously injured.
Alpha or whatever, he’s still a person — sleeping like this, he could die of hypothermia. What do I do……
He nudged the man’s jacket aside with a paw. He deliberately pressed down on the spot stained with blood, trying to wake him — but the man didn’t stir. He’d thought pressing on it would at least wake him from the pain, but there was no movement at all. It didn’t seem to be his own blood.
Did he fall and pass out.
If he just goes back like this, divine punishment might await. But cat Mio couldn’t help him. Mio’s problem wasn’t only that he shifted between human and cat — it was also that he couldn’t control the transformations, and that he shifted into every member of the cat family that existed in the world at random intervals. The gray cat of today might become a leopard cat tomorrow.
While Mio agonized, his two eyes landed on the man’s white chest, where a button had burst open, and his shirt pulled taut against it. Even the outline of his abs showed through the thin shirt soaked in sweat. In the midst of this man’s life being in urgent peril, Mio sank into a ridiculous fantasy and despaired.
His round eyes blinked several times as if torn. Maybe it was because he was in cat form, but impulse was overtaking reason. His vision went dark and dizzy. Something unknown kept urging Mio on. Whether you can hold back, it said. Still warm, and on that wide chest……
It was the instinct of a cat. The instinct to curl up neatly in a warm place and rest……
Otherwise known as,
the bread loaf.
It was insane. He’d just never been allowed outside — he wasn’t empty-headed. With wavering eyes, Mio had been staring at the man’s blood-drenched chest for a long time — and in the end, unable to suppress the impulse, he leapt toward the man’s broad chest in a wide arc.
This is amazing, what do I do……
The moment his light little body landed on top of the man’s abs, Mio felt a dizzying sensation unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
The moment the scent reaching his nose registered in his mind, his head went hazy and his small body twisted on its own. Beneath his gray coat, his white paws — like white stockings — were curling up in a circle, and before he could even stop himself, he was frantically rubbing his muzzle all over the man’s chest.
“Myaaaaang—!”
The man’s pheromones were slowly encroaching on Chae Mio’s reason. Did alphas really affect omegas even in their cat form? His heat was still far off — and yet his haunches were trembling parr-r-r.
Drunk on the catnip-scented pheromones that had struck his entire body, cat Mio soon started rumbling and purring deep in his throat.
For now, the plan is to sleep on top of this man and share my body heat.
Mio was absurdly too small to share much body warmth, but it was better than doing nothing at all. Having plastered a convenient excuse over it and just as he was about to settle in to sleep — the man, whom he’d assumed was unconscious, suddenly opened his eyes.
“……What is this now.”
A smoky, hoarse voice murmured. His pitch-black eyes, half-open and unfocused, were not looking at Mio — but above Mio, staring at empty air. He murmured as if in a trance.
“……Too pretty.”
Mio followed his gaze and looked — there was nothing there. Only pale, hazy smoke.
“A celestial maiden descending……”
Has he gone delirious from the cold? He was staring at empty air and talking about celestial maidens — it looked like he might have come face to face with some kind of ghost. A worried thought struck Mio that perhaps he was experiencing a final flashback right at the moment of death.
No. He can’t die. He didn’t want his very first outing on Coming-of-Age Day to be left as a horrible memory. Mio swung a front paw and smacked the man squarely across the cheek with a snap — in the spirit of snap out of it.
Thwack —
“Ugh.”
Putting force into his tiny cotton-ball paw — thwack, thwack, thwack! — he aimed straight for where the blood had clotted at his jawline and struck. The man’s chest vibrated faintly from the pain, but he got smacked by a cat and still fell right back to sleep, so it was all for nothing. Small as he already was, beating up an alpha had drained Mio completely, and he could no longer fight off the drowsiness.
For now, sleep first. Think later. When instinct is in charge, the boundary between beast and human grows thin.
A kitten’s day is mostly sleep. Five blinks passed, and the gray cat atop the blood-drenched stranger began to purr and snore, without a trace of fear.
The next day, Mio forced open his sleep-crusted eyes. He’d been caught in a light drizzle at dawn before falling asleep, so his body shivered with chills and his fur was on end. And maybe because he’d slept outside, his head was foggy and he could barely muster any strength. He opened his tiny mouth in irritation.
