The large-chested man blinked his bleary eyes several times and let out a hollow breath. Being found asleep in an alleyway and picking up a cat at the same time wasn’t exactly a common occurrence, after all. More than that though — Mio’s ears had caught the word “mission.” What did that mean. What mission?
“But you — you could sleep not knowing whether your senior was dead or alive?”
“It’s six in the morning…… Besides, why really were you unreachable? I called dozens of times…… I was up all night and only just dozed off without realizing it……”
But for having dozed off just briefly, his face was extremely puffy. The man, wiping the sleep from his eyes, stood up awkwardly with a sheepish look. He was a man as tall as a bear, his face nearly hidden by the sign above the reception desk. The chest of the nurse uniform he wore looked like it was about to burst.
Watching the taut fabric stretch to its limits, Mio unconsciously couldn’t suppress the urge and moved his front paws, making little kneading motions at the air. His two soft white paws moved in alternating strokes like pedaling a bicycle.
It was kneading.
Oh no. Mio realized what he was doing only after the fact. Nobody would know, but it was still wrong to be imagining kneading while looking at someone else’s chest. Mio felt embarrassed and tucked his paws back behind him.
“Senior. Your body.”
“As long as I’m not dead, that’s good enough.”
The man answered the nurse’s question flatly and headed toward the examination room with Mio in his arms. The big nurse followed right behind, looking him over. He didn’t seem particularly alarmed even at the sight of the bloodstains soaking the man’s midsection. Something is off. Even through the eyes of a Mio who knew nothing of the world, it was a scene far removed from normal.
A small pediatric clinic, and a nurse this calm at the sight of all this blood…… This doesn’t seem like an ordinary hospital.
He’d have to put his cat’s sharp senses to work and look around carefully. A door with a placard reading Examination Room. Sliding open the grimy sliding door, a glass partition covered in checkered film appeared. Past some medical equipment of unclear purpose was a large chair, and across from it sat a gray desk stacked with books and monitors.
At the desk, a man in green clothes was slumped in his seat with a tired complexion. Sitting like that, he’s going to need back surgery. Mio recalled something his brother used to say. The uninterested-looking man with a name tag reading “Kim Seunghyeon” on his chest heard footsteps and stretched his neck forward like a tortoise to look.
“You’re here, Yu Cheongmyeong.”
“Move. That’s my seat.”
Thanks to that man, Mio finally learned the name of the man who had taken him. Yu Cheongmyeong. Pale green eyes stared quietly toward Cheongmyeong. Yu Cheongmyeong. The small mouth parted for a moment, then closed. No matter how hard he tried to make a sound with this mouth, he couldn’t call out his name.
Hearing himself told to move, Kim Seunghyeon quietly raised a fist. One finger in the middle shot up. Mio knew the need for back surgery, but not the meaning of raising that particular middle finger — so he stuck out his tongue and licked his nose.
“Without you, Cheongmyeong, I’d be the director here.”
“Then go buy yourself a hospital. Mom’s calling every week asking if the clinic is going under and I’m tired of it. Cheoryong. Antiseptic and gauze, please.”
The man cut off the conversation unilaterally, then took out a wet wipe and wiped down the already-clean patient chair even cleaner before sitting. He stroked Mio’s head gently as Mio looked around, producing a rather warm voice.
“Stay still, baby.”
Did he really intend to raise him? Caught in his hand, Mio sat tamely on the man’s thigh and lifted his chin. Mya. At the short, thin cry, Seunghyeon — who had been lying draped over the desk — straightened up and adjusted his glasses.
“What are you doing? Why are you walking around with a cat?”
“I was chosen. This is finally the day my wish comes true.”
“……Is it actually a cat? Why is it so well-behaved though? I thought it was a stuffed animal.”
“Right? Our cat’s a little especially cute. Gray coats like this aren’t common among stray cats. First time you’ve seen one too, right?”
At his dreamy remark, Seunghyeon spun his pen and gave a small nod. Being called doll-like and complimented as a special cat made even Mio feel a little pleased with himself.
It’s not wrong. Mio had been refining cat attitude for twenty years. Of course he hadn’t lived as a cat the whole twenty years — strictly speaking, he had spent more time in his human form as Chae Mio — but that was beside the point. Right now the more pressing problem was the bothersome man. Mio, unaware of the thunderbolt soon to come, was doing everything he could to dodge the man’s hand persistently prodding at his soft belly.
“He’s cute, but if he’s a stray, shouldn’t you take him to a vet for a check-up first?”
“That can happen step by step too. He’s still young, so taking him straight to the vet might make him cry. He’s just a baby.”
“Still, make an appointment. He’ll need to be neutered too. That should be done before he turns one.”
“Neuter? Ah — the beans.”
Hold on. What did he just say? Mio couldn’t believe his ears.
“Should I have them removed.”
The man bent his head as he said it and peered down at Mio. The kitten reflected in his pitch-black eyes leapt up and puffed its tail rigid. The man smiled with amusement. His throat bobbed slowly up and down, and his shoulders shook slightly. The corners of his mouth curved up pleasantly and a dimple carved into his cheek. But right now was not the time to be noticing dimples.
The beans?
To think he’d be described with that word in his lifetime. Chae Mio arched his back up like a mountain, raised even the soft baby fuzz unique to his kitten form, and bared his teeth. It was a display of threat. Just you try taking me to the vet. I won’t let it go!
“Kyaang!”
Unfortunately, the way his fur stood out in static-charged spikes all over his body brought not a shred of fear to the man — only deep delight. The man rubbed his own right cheek roughly and let out a sigh.
“Kim Seunghyeon, I think this one understands what people say.”
“Is it male?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t check. Our baby must be a genius.”
The man replied lightly and closed a gentle grip around Mio’s torso. Mio, deflated that his threats were having no effect whatsoever, hadn’t even managed to escape yet.
“Myaaack!”
“Baby, are you that scared of being neutered?”
As Mio cried out in distress, the man smiled softly. Despite his words, he was making no attempt to hide that he was thoroughly enjoying this.
You’re insane! No! My beans——!
This is a disaster. What would happen if he got dragged to the vet like this and actually got neutered?
Up until twenty-one, Mio had barely met anyone from outside, let alone peers his own age — and the only friends he’d ever had were the stray cats that visited the manor.
There was Nini, the yellow cat Mio had raised himself, of course — and the cat always wandering around with grass stuck to its head, nicknamed Grassleaf — and the cleverest one, the black cat.
Beyond those, there were so many cats he’d met that calling each of them by name would be overwhelming — and among them, a few had been neutered. The Norwegian Forest Cat he’d named Leo was one of them.
When the females’ heat came around and every tom began meticulously grooming and preening himself, Leo — the most impressive and handsome among them — would lounge uninterestedly beside Mio with their hindquarters pressed together, doing nothing but napping. The females who didn’t know Leo had been neutered would deliberately waft their pheromones and approach him, only to get turned down and leave with nothing but complaints about how standoffish he was for a foreign cat.
Mio understood what neutering was. In the long run, it wasn’t purely a painful thing — that was what he’d thought at the time when he’d comforted Leo.
Leo. It’s okay. They say you live longer after being neutered.
What’s the point of living long if you can’t have kittens or mate.
Leo had said mrow mrow toward cat-Mio and turned his back. Leo had been depressed throughout the entire heat season, and Mio had found it hard to fully understand his feelings at the time.
“Even if you don’t want it, it has to be done. If you want to live long with daddy, you need to be neutered.”
And now this man was saying the exact same thing to him.
What…… Is this divine punishment? Did I do something bad enough to deserve this?
This couldn’t go on. Fur bristling on end, Mio slashed at the back of the approaching hand with sharp claws. For just a brief instant, the grip in the man’s hand slackened. In that moment, Mio gathered every last ounce of strength and leapt swiftly toward the floor. He planted his hind paws squarely against the man’s firm thigh to spring off — but the man was faster. Like a flash of blue lightning, he snatched the airborne kitten Mio out of midair in an instant.
No——! Caught helplessly in the large hand, the cat let out a death-knell shriek in defense of his beans.
“Myaaaaaack——!!”
“Ha ha. Such a feisty little thing. I prefer the scrappy ones over the gentle ones, honestly.”
The man, with Mio — teeth bared and thrashing — caught easily in one hand, drew him right up close. He stroked the fluffy belly and white paw tops too, then raised his hand straight up toward the ceiling. Under the fluorescent light, four short little legs flailed. The baby fuzz sticking out in all directions looked like a pure white sea urchin. The man stared at Mio’s lower half and tilted his head as if surprised.
“No beans. Our meow’s a girl.”
“Kyaack!!”
The moment he finished speaking, rather sharp claws scraped across the back of his hand. It was Mio’s feeble strike. Even this time, as if determined not to let Mio go, the grip of the hand holding on tight was remarkable — blood flowing from the back of his hand or not. For the sake of Mio, who had a lightning bolt going off inside his head, Kim Seunghyeon in green clothes scolded him.
“Are you blind? The beans are right there in the back.”
“Oh. They were just too small to see.”
Too small? It wasn’t the beans of a kitten being dismissed — it felt like a humiliation against Chae Mio’s own lower half. On top of that, with the cat’s sharp perception, he could tell that all three men in this room were alphas. Surrounded by alphas and having his lower half evaluated!
“Myaaaaaang!”
He tensed his belly and tail and cried back — the man paid him no mind and smiled pleasantly.
“Listen to him talking back. So cute I could die. Should I just plant a kiss on him.”
“Senior, he doesn’t need to be neutered yet. Looks like about two and a half months. It’ll probably be around four, five months.”
“Yeah? Still a long way off then.”
A stroke of luck amid misfortune. Cheoryong, who had cut into the exchange between cat and human, had bought Mio roughly two months of grace. Of course, Mio would not be here before those two months were up.
The man shrugged and set the feebly-struggling Mio down on the floor with great care. The instant all four paws touched the ground, Mio’s body — which had been about to bolt away at full speed — immediately gave out on him and he flopped over onto his back.
