Chapter 0. Prologue
“Marry me.”
I confessed to him on impulse. My darkened vision swayed like waves. Yesterday and today, the weather was refreshingly clear for once — no rain. The loud, unintelligible foreign chatter sounded like music to my ears. The man didn’t answer. Whether he hadn’t heard, or was pretending not to — he simply continued on in silence toward the rugged mountain path.
It wouldn’t be Chae Mio to get hurt by that and sulk. Mio pressed his body snugly against the man’s broad, warm back. Mio’s breath grazed the nape of his neck, exposed beneath his short hair. In that instant, the man’s back stirred — as if wings were about to sprout from his shoulder blades.
“Hm? Marry me.”
Mio pressed his lips close behind the man’s ear and whispered the words so only he could hear — and this time, the man stopped in his tracks on the steep mountain path.
The sound of dead leaves crunching underfoot was dry and rustling, almost like silk curtains catching a breeze. Mio knew, compared to others, that the muscles in the man’s cheeks and jaw were particularly unresponsive. As if layered beneath several membranes, his expression remained the same flat mask whether he smiled or sulked.
“What is a little thing like you saying. You can’t, even if you want to. You’re not even old enough to register a marriage.”
“Then we can do it when I’m an adult.”
For the first time, a reaction with actual emotion broke through the man’s usual stoicism — one of pure disbelief. Behind his shoulder, yellow string lights swayed and glowed, and his gaze was fixed entirely on Mio.
“Get down.”
Climbing down from his back, Mio had a gut feeling he would remember this moment for a very long time. His chest was trembling like it might burst — maybe that was why the foreign scenery he’d grown so used to felt strangely special tonight.
Fat, plump palm trees.
A yellow star hanging from the tip of a palm tree like a string light.
The damp earth under his bare feet as he climbed down from the man’s back.
The faint grassy scent of the man, and the sight of himself standing among the crowd.
“You shouldn’t say things like that without thinking. You don’t know how scary men can be.”
“I’m a man too, aren’t I?”
Is hyung scared of me then? Mio tilted his chin in question and shot back — and a heavy sigh came in return.
“Haah…. If I turn you down, are you going to say the same thing to other guys?”
“Yeah. If not you, I’ll do it with some other man.”
Well. I have no intention of doing that and no reason to. But Mio nodded anyway. At the answer that came out without a moment’s thought, the man let out a long, deflating sigh and ran a hand over the back of his neck. The locals glanced in passing at the full-grown adult man and the tiny kid — smaller than kids his age — standing face to face.
“Mmm…….”
He looked a little troubled. Like a man standing three steps from the edge of a cliff with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he swept his hair back and stretched his lips out long.
Strange.
His face was still as blank as ever, like a mask had been plastered over it — and yet it felt as though the thin, taut membrane over his soul had peeled back just slightly, and Mio could almost predict what he was thinking.
“Let’s do it. But six years from now.”
“Why six years and not five? I’ll be twenty in five years. Six years is too vague, isn’t it?”
“Twenty is a problem. It would look terrible if you acted like you’d been waiting for it the whole time. Like trash.”
It’s not like that…… Mio said nothing, only tilting his chin up to look at the man in silence.
“And I’m giving you more time. You might end up liking the new people you meet when you’re twenty. Choices should always be made carefully.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’ve made the best choice right now.”
The man let out a faint laugh through his nose. The thick skin of his face barely moved, but Mio had the illusion that the corner of his mouth had curved up in a pleasant smile.
“You’re lying about doing it when I’m twenty-one, aren’t you? You’ll just disappear and not show up.”
“No. I promise. But on the other hand, you might be the one who wants to take it back by then. I’ll be in my thirties by that point.”
“No, I’ve decided! You’re my husband.”
“Husband…. You should find yourself a wife.”
Those were words he didn’t want to hear, so Mio pressed his lips tightly together again. The slight buzz that had faded came spinning back like a switch had been flipped on. With a face where a rosy flush had been layered transparently over his round, baby-fat cheeks like watercolor paint, Mio stretched his arms high as if asking to be carried.
The man let out a short — huu — sigh, then turned around and offered Mio his back.
Hyung is my husband. I decided.
It was a night where starlight came pouring down.
Chapter 1. Instinct Before Fate
Mio was a being who should never have been born.
Instead of a lusty cry, Mio was born trembling, wrapped in a newborn’s gown — like a drenched little kitten soaking in amniotic fluid. In the very moment he first breathed the world’s air, unable even to open his eyes, he was abandoned by his parents.
There were no tearful smiles born from the reverence of life and the creation of a family. Chae Mio’s first breath began beneath a gaze filled with contempt.
The ones who became parents to the abandoned Mio were two older brothers, much older than him. The teenage boys took turns sleeping to keep watch by the kitten’s side, and often when they dozed off and woke up, instead of a white cat, a baby with wide, blinking eyes would be lying in the cradle.
As Mio grew, he shifted between cat and human at irregular intervals, each time becoming a different breed and color of cat. Yesterday’s Siamese might become a black cat today.
Whatever cat he became, it was fine as long as he was small enough to be cradled in his brothers’ arms — but very rarely. So rarely it could be counted on one hand — accidents did happen.
If you suddenly turn into a cat it’ll be a disaster. There’s no other way. You’re the only beast-person in the world. If your true nature is exposed, it’ll only bring pain to you and the family.
In those moments, Mio spent his entire life trapped by that one sentence of self-blame.
But that was all in the past. The Mio of today carefully slipped out through the terrace door and held his breath. Instead of magnificent cat whiskers, he scrunched his full, delicate lashes and parted his lips in a small murmur.
“I’ll just go out for one day and come right back.”
A night where even the lights that embroidered the evening had gone to sleep. It was the hour when everyone had already returned to their own rooms and laid themselves down to rest — so there was no one to hear it, just a farewell spoken alone.
His heart fluttered anxiously. This was his very first time running away from home. Would he be able to pull it off without getting caught? Mio quietly hunched his shoulders and glanced back inside, then rose up on his tiptoes and quickened his pace. It would be a problem if his light-sleeping younger— older brother happened to wake up.
And besides — tomorrow was Coming-of-Age Day. The day Mio would finally become a true adult.
I think I can do it.
It was a whim of his own making, a feeling conjured from nothing — but Mio felt a surge of resolve as if he had received a divine revelation. Which meant he had to get out before being caught. It would take a good ten minutes of walking to reach the gap in the wall that his cat friends had told him about.
Okay! When I get out, the things I need to see are…. neon signs, and……
Feet in light white sneakers stepped carefully across the freshly sprouted grass. The lawn underfoot was a little springy and the air was cool. In the vast garden that stretched on endlessly as if to conceal someone, the scent of roses — rich from drinking the night dew — hung thick at the tip of his nose.
Mio pressed his shoulder close against the garden wall, where white rose petals were dripping down one by one, and walked quickly. When he had casually and indirectly asked his nanny, she had mentioned there were shops where you could give something and receive money — but he couldn’t quite remember where those were. He had deliberately chosen an expensive watch to wear on his way out……
How can he not look like an idiot? Mio was about to fall into serious contemplation when a sudden, overwhelming dizziness struck him. His vision bleached white, then yellowed. The signs of a change.
“Wait, right now——”
Before he could finish the words. The staggering body collapsed, and simultaneously Chae Mio vanished — as if evaporated into the air, gone in the literal blink of an eye. The clothes that had pooled to the ground wriggled. And what came bounding out from inside the shirt was one tiny little kitten.
“Myaang.”
Round, pale green eyes blinked. Mio stretched out his front paws and toes to take stock of his condition. About two and a half months old, maybe. Yesterday he had turned into an adult cat, but today he was a kitten. The unpredictable, unforeseeable transformation was one of the reasons Mio was kept locked inside the house — but right now, it was an opportunity. Mio used this chance to climb up the rose trellis and finally escaped the house.
I’m finally out!
The gray cat lifted its chin proudly.
A faded rose-pink muzzle and nose.
Round cat eyes with tips that curved ever so slightly upward.
A white belly and muzzle, and a tiny kitten dressed in a velvet-soft gray coat over everything else.
Mio puffed out his chest with dignity and took in the scene before him with both eyes.
A dark field where the horizon could not be distinguished, and an elegant manor far removed from the city — as if trying to hide something. Aside from the single time he had gone out for treatment, the only world Chae Mio had ever known in his twenty years of life.
He could have left this easily all along — so why had he never even thought to leave until now? Only ever looking up at the sky, climbing high into the trees to watch the tiny, distant cars endlessly from above……
But it was all in the past, so there was no need for regret. Mio was a clean sort of person. He didn’t cling messily to things that had already passed. A human who turned into a cat couldn’t go shedding tears over something so trivial. Because turning into a cat was more shocking than anything else in the world.
For now, let’s just find the neon signs.
Neon signs. On the rare occasions he had been shown a TV screen, a daily life and a world he didn’t know had existed within it. He had always thought the night was dark and quiet — but light had come pouring in through the black screen, and the night it illuminated was dazzling and boisterous.
Like tens of millions of pixels filling a black screen, the colorful neon signs that rowdily filled the dark night were not forgotten even when he closed his eyes to sleep. The pink neon sign that had sunk deep into his mind swayed and drifted like something swimming through the ocean, sailing across his black ceiling.
Where would the ship of the imagined neon sign arrive? Perhaps a small island in Vietnam — where Mio’s memories and romance had settled to the bottom.
