“Meow.”
Mio had tried to stretch and roll over — and felt the ground shifting and squirming beneath him. Because of it, his small body was just about to topple down to the floor when a warm hand caught him.
“Our cat’s awake.”
The person who caught the barely-awake Mio was a young man who looked to be in his late twenties. His angular bone structure was particularly pronounced, and even with dried blood smeared at the end of his slender jaw, he was beautiful. Disheveled black hair swept back, deeply set eye sockets, and clear almond-shaped eyes drawn as if with a fine-tipped brush.
Because of the gap between night and day, it took Mio quite a while to recognize him. He was the alpha whose stomach Mio had climbed on top of the night before.
“You chose your owner well. Still a baby, but you’ve got taste.”
Considering he’d been collapsed and asleep in a filthy alley, his black eyes radiated fresh vitality, confidence, and composure. As if the vague sense of unease Mio had felt from him last night had all been a lie.
“Looks like I’ve finally been chosen.”
With the dimples that carved deeply along his cheeks, the man looked like quite a refreshing handsome man even covered in blood. He parted his lips in a voice that trembled faintly like a breeze.
“Let’s go home now. Our cat.”
What?
Mio’s eyes, which had been sneaking glances at the man’s face as if enchanted, went wide. Why am I your cat? Contrary to Mio’s flustered feelings, the man — his lip split and bleeding — smiled brilliantly and carried on with his nonsense without any sign of pain.
“I get why you chose me. My face was like the only lantern lighting up this pitch-black alleyway.”
Mio closed his muzzle with a sour expression at the string of self-assured words. In truth, Mio had thought the night before that the light around the man had glowed in an eerie, bewitching way — but watching him actually say something like that out loud made Mio want to take back every thought from last night.
His handsome face and his personality are complete polar opposites.
“……Why? Don’t tell me you thought I was dead and were trying to use me as a bed?”
“…….”
“That couldn’t be it. Ha, it hurts like hell. Some son of a bitch had the nerve to put a knife on this beautiful face…… A face that’s never so much as glanced at a plastic surgery sign in its life, and now it’s going to look like a surgery special.”
What is with this man. Flustered. He looked to be roughly the same age as his older brother, but his mannerisms and way of speaking were completely, utterly different. And of all people, the first person he had to meet after running away was this man. Mio had been licking his front paw to soothe his nerves — and then his eyes sharpened in a flash. He’d seen the neon signs now, so running away aside, he needed to escape. This wasn’t the time to be staring blankly up at someone else’s face.
I need to go home.
But strangely, he couldn’t get any strength into his body. Even just sticking out his tongue to lick his fur felt like it would drain him completely.
Mio didn’t know it, but this inexplicable symptom was a side effect caused by the smoke that had filled the alley the night before. The sleeping gas that had drifted thickly through the alley had looked like steam to Mio. The reason the man had also fallen asleep in the alley was that same sleeping gas.
Nothing else I can do. I didn’t want to hurt him.
If struggling was too difficult, there was only one option. Mio shot a glance up at the handsome man’s face, drew a deep breath, and then sank his teeth hard into the fingers holding him. Gnng.
But what was this. There was no reaction whatsoever, and Mio twitched his nose in irritation. At this point he should be yelping in pain and shaking his hand free — but instead the man lifted Mio, pressed his forehead against his, met his eyes, and rattled on.
“Cute. Already showing your owner affection right away.”
This…… looks like affection to him? Flustered, Mio glanced down. Even rice-grain sized fangs were fangs — from the skin punctured at exactly that rice-grain size, a thin trickle of vivid red blood was clearly dripping down.
“These clothes are all going in the trash. Disgusting, honestly.”
While Mio was struggling and whining, the man got up, brushed himself off here and there, strode out of the alleyway, and shoved Mio unceremoniously into his jacket pocket.
“Baby, bear with it even if it feels stuffy.”
Mio went into his pocket with all four legs sticking straight up. One side of the black jacket pocket bulged into the shape of a cat. Mio, who had been squirming inside, barely managed to right himself and poked just his head out over the edge of the pocket.
The rowdy atmosphere from the night before was gone, and the streets had grown quiet. The early dawn tinted in a hazy shade of blue like a filter. Aside from a handful of university students wandering around looking for the first bus, it was a desolate scene with only the wind blowing. The man surveyed the street, then boldly hailed a taxi in his blood-drenched state.
About two taxis passed him right by, and in the end he stepped out into the middle of the road for the third one and stood his ground. Running him over would mean a homicide case, so this taxi slammed its brakes urgently to a stop right in front of him.
Screeeeech —
Even with the taxi skidding to a stop right in front of his nose, the man was unfazed. He opened the door of the car that had barely stopped with its tires leaving black skid marks and climbed in without a word. A seating arrangement with no mutual agreement.
“What the f***! Nearly hit you! What the hell are you——”
The taxi driver, who had spun around with the veins in his neck bulging, abruptly let his words trail off. The sight of the man covered in blood seemingly left him with nothing to say.
“Ah, no……”
Ignoring the driver’s shock, the man yawned, wiped the corner of his eye, and without changing his expression one bit, said exactly what he had to say.
“Samcheon 2-dong, 77-3, please. Don’t worry — it’s nothing serious, I’m in training. Action actor. I just came from a shoot.”
“Ac…… actor?”
“Yes. Can’t you tell from the face? It’s makeup. What kind of madman would walk around looking like this. We need to get there quickly, so let’s head out right away.”
“I would have thought…… that sort of thing, you’d hire a private car for.”
“I go separately. Let’s go. I’m running late for the shoot.”
Once in the car, Mio, who had been forcibly stuffed into the pocket, poked his head out. The inside of the car was a space barely big enough to seat two people. But more importantly——
How do I get out of here?
His body was still as heavy as a waterlogged cotton ball, and his arms and legs ached with exhaustion. He was so drained that even retracting a single claw required energy. He had a gut feeling it would take quite some time for his condition to recover. Maybe he should stick with this man and make a run for it the moment he felt better.
The city was an unfamiliar place to Mio, and stray cats were always exposed to danger. Rather than blindly roaming unfamiliar streets, perhaps staying by the side of someone who had voluntarily declared they would be Mio’s person might be safer for the time being.
Okay. Exactly three hours.
He didn’t even need a full day. A few hours and he’d be fine.
Even while Mio was lost in thought, the world kept moving without pause.
Mio was resting his chin on his front paws and deep in serious deliberation about the near future, when the man’s firm fingertips carefully touched Mio’s small, plump front paw. It was a hand that was fair and straight and pretty to look at — but with calluses built up beneath the fingers and along the side of the first knuckle.
Mio was a person, and having someone touch his feet was something he was used to, so he let the paw rest there without much reaction. At the white paw extended as if inviting him to touch it, the man savored the moment, reminding himself that this was reality and not a dream.
“Unbelievable. I get to see pink jelly paw pads with my own eyes like this.”
It was a genuinely moved exclamation. Mio felt a little sorry for this man. What was so good about the little pads at the bottom of these paws that he was this happy about it. Either he hadn’t caught the pitying look in Mio’s eyes, or didn’t care — the man, having gotten his fill of paw pad touching, tickled the bridge of Mio’s nose and spoke in a soft, coaxing tone.
“Stay still. Go to the hospital with daddy, then we’ll go home. We’ll pick up cat food on the way and get our little meow a house too. Want to come up with a name when we get home?”
It was a soft, whispering, cloud-like voice. The pale green eyes blinked slowly.
Daddy, my foot……
The tiny heart of the grumbling kitten thumped at a very rapid pace. Whether it was because of the impossibly handsome face he couldn’t take his eyes off of, or because the man was an alpha whose pheromones were deeply entangled with his own as an omega — he couldn’t quite tell, but he couldn’t control his racing heart.
If I can’t face it, avoid it. He swatted his paw uselessly at the air, then ducked his head back down into the pocket and hid away. Above him, the man’s laughter scattered lightly like cotton candy.
The taxi of the trembling, flustered driver arrived at a neighborhood that hadn’t seen much development. Mio and the man got out in front of a shabby, dirty ochre-brick three-story building whose only cleaning had been whatever rain had done to it over the years.
From the perspective of Mio, who had spent his entire life in a top-tier manor surrounded by wide gardens and walls, it was a building no different from a crumbling ruin about to collapse at any moment. It had a bad feeling to it — his fur bristled on its own and the back of his neck went cold. Mio curled himself small and crawled deeper into the pocket, peeking out with only his eyes.
It seemed like a familiar place to the man. The footsteps that climbed up the stairs — where the weight of years could be felt in full — came to a stop at the third-floor pediatric clinic.
Myeongseong Clinic — Pediatrics
A few stickers were stuck on the glass door, which was see-through all the way through. The edges were all peeling from a thick layer of grime that had built up over the years. It was still early morning, but it seemed they had already opened — the white fluorescent light illuminated the dim hallway.
A bright chime rang out as the glass door swung open. Inside the clinic, a row of old, tacky mint-colored leather sofas that couldn’t keep up with any passing trend lined the walls — and at the reception desk, a heavyset man in a pink nurse uniform was nodding off, his head dropping rhythmically with each beat.
“Hey. Nurse, give me an examination.”
The man swept the back of his hair and walked inside with a blunt greeting, and at that sound the nurse jolted reflexively to his feet and called out to the front.
“……Senior, you’re here!!”
The sound like a train whistle gave Mio a fright. He clung to the man’s chest, trembling, and a large hand came sweeping gently over his back.
“You’re scaring our little meow.”
“What? Hold on…… What’s that cat?”
“I picked it up.”
“Picked it up…… while on a mission? You were out all night without even contacting us, and you picked up a stray cat——”
