The two eyes that had been tightly shut during the conversation about ideal types slowly revealed a pair of chartreuse irises. Cheongmyeong, his face still tracing the edges of a dream, absentmindedly prodded the pink pads of Mio’s paws with his fingertips.
“She was exactly the type I’d always imagined. May. Do you understand? Last night, you almost gained another parent.”
“Myaa.”
Half-asleep, Mio responded with complete indifference, then flipped his compact little body around and lay with his back to Cheongmyeong. He’d been getting poked and prodded nonstop for a while now, and he was tired of it.
Just move away from me.
Watching the standoffish cat kick at his hand with its hind paws, Cheongmyeong laughed. “Our May is really just like a cat.” Telling a cat it’s like a cat is a little funny.
2. A Man Stranger Than Me (Part 1)
“Anyway. Our May needs to eat. Why haven’t you touched your kibble?”
He gestured toward the food bowl he’d set beside the sofa. The truth was, Mio had been starving since yesterday — his stomach was on the verge of growling — but he hadn’t so much as sniffed the kibble.
I’m a person. I don’t eat that garbage.
Mio’s meals had always been managed with meticulous care and a strict diet. Even when he was in cat form, there were no exceptions. He’d always been fed specially prepared raw food made by a personal chef, and even his treats were things like Korean beef jerky handmade by his nanny. Mio was a young master’s cat, after all.
I’m not eating. I don’t want to. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.
Grumbling internally, he cracked open one eye. The man was dressed in comfortable loungewear, apparently having no intention of going out today. Mio’s gaze drifted from the knee close beside him up to the chest where the T-shirt pulled taut, then he closed his eyes again. A soft purring breath escaped from between his closed lips.
He clearly has no idea I turned human last night.
Good. He didn’t want to waste energy this early in the morning. In this tiny body with its stubby little legs, he’d have to walk two or three times as far as anyone else.
I need to start planning how to get home soon. I’m still the same for now, but by tomorrow I might shift into something other than a kitten — maybe a wildcat.
A wildcat would be lucky. What if I shift into a lion? Then I’d go straight to the zoo.
At the arrival of that worst-case scenario, the cat’s broad brow furrowed in a deep vertical crease.
“I’ll admit this is the closest I’ve ever been to a cat for this long, but you’re no ordinary one.”
Cheongmyeong smiled — a sound like a dry laugh — then got up and headed to the kitchen. In the meantime, Mio poked his head out from the beige-colored teepee Cheongmyeong had made for him. He had a routine to keep. In the mornings, he had to wash his face in the morning sunlight, the way cats do.
He set his sights on a spot where the light was falling, leaped off the cushion — and slipped. His body went rolling end over end. His unintended destination turned out to be right beside the lanky man standing at the kitchen island.
“Did you come to see your dad, May? Did you miss me already?”
As if. But the man had crouched down, folding his large frame into something small, and he was smiling with a joy so unguarded that Mio couldn’t bring himself to say no. He sat there, a little awkward, and the man held out a single bright red stick toward him.
“Our May’s having her first Churu.”
The Churu he’d bitten open drew closer, and Mio’s mouth began to open on its own. His little pink tongue peeked out, moving to meet the Churu against his own will. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was clearly a cat treat — he had to resist.
A smell that drives cats insane.
But no matter how much he’d shifted into a cat, he couldn’t eat cat food. Chae Mio’s true self was simply an eccentric human being, not a cat.
“Apparently all cats go crazy for this stuff.”
That was true. Mio felt like he was going crazy. He’d already started imagining the taste and scent of the Churu in his head, but he clung to the thin thread of his reason and snapped his head sharply to the side.
“That’s why I’ve been carrying Churu in my pocket every day for a while. Whenever I ran into a stray cat, I’d tear one open and hold it out — but every single one of them would hiss the moment they saw my face and run away.”
“Nyaa.”
“May won’t run away, right?”
What kind of man says something like that… If he says something like that… I can’t run away. Was it calculated? Was he saying all of this on purpose? What was he supposed to do now. The part of him that said just eat it and the part of him that said don’t forget you’re human collided head-on.
He was stuck in that internal war, mouth watering helplessly. Cheongmyeong, who had been watching May in silence, pushed the stick up under his snout and said, low and pressing:
“Bite it. Your body wants it.”
What is he even saying……
As if he’d read Mio’s mind, Cheongmyeong’s shoulders jerked, and he visibly flustered, quickly correcting himself.
“No, I was just thinking about last night——”
This was the first time Mio had ever seen Yu Cheongmyeong at a loss. He stared at him with blank, unfocused eyes.
“What am I even saying. No, no. That’s not — baby, let’s eat the Churu.”
He’d been fumbling over his words in a panic, then resolved the situation on his own. Cheongmyeong immediately squeezed the Churu out — and before Mio could register what was happening, smeared it all over his muzzle. His tiny lips were instantly coated in Churu. This had been an accident.
No! What are you feeding me! I said I wasn’t going to eat it!
He thrashed all four paws in furious protest — but only for a moment. Mio switched tactics. The scent of Churu flooded his nose. Sparks were going off in his head, making him dizzy enough to keel over. What was already on his mouth was beyond his control now.
What can I do. It’s not like I have hands — I can’t wipe it off. I’ll just have to lick it up.
It’s not like I can leave it there either. I have no choice. He went through a whole elaborate process of self-justification. Then he tentatively stuck out his pink tongue — and in that instant, something shifted in his eyes. Both front paws shot out and stretched forward, desperately latching onto the fingers holding the stick.
“Nyaam!”
Mio couldn’t contain his delight. “Nyayang, nyaang!” he trilled, his throat rumbling with tiny vibrations. Mnom mnom — an endless stream of adorable little sounds poured out of him. Cheongmyeong’s pretty eyes curved into crescents alongside him.
“He’s literally going nya-nya while he eats. Our little nya-nya.”
The chaebol-bred stray cat May, who had been going on about human dignity, was completely demolished by the taste and smell of Churu. He didn’t even realize he was making nyaa sounds — he was in a state of total bliss. He had, in the end, lost all dignity.
“Does May like it?”
After licking at the Churu with such passionate dedication, there was nothing left coming out of the stick. He’d been starving all day before finally eating, so the craving hit him even harder.
Reluctant to let it end, he licked his lower jaw and stared straight up at Cheongmyeong’s face. The man’s lips curled into a slow, sly smile. He squeezed out every last bit of Churu and smeared it onto his own finger, then held it out.
Mio had fallen completely under Churu’s spell. The dreamlike texture and its utterly captivating effect were something else. In the end, a fully grown twenty-one-year-old, without a shred of embarrassment, licked meticulously at the man’s fingers. Of course — “May” was a kitten not yet three months old.
“That feels weird.”
The rough little bumps of a tongue’s texture must have registered, because Cheongmyeong made an odd face and went quiet. As if lost in thought, his dark irises grew hazy beneath the shadow of his long lashes. What could he be thinking? The answer to that curiosity wasn’t far off.
“A spy……”
Cheongmyeong murmured to himself, patting the bottom of the little cat that had wrapped both paws around his finger and was hugging it for dear life.
“May, Dad’s going to go wash up.”
Mio watched Cheongmyeong’s retreating figure disappear into the small bathroom, then cut off whatever lingering reluctance remained and promptly made his way into the open bedroom.
Alright. The owner’s gone to wash up — now’s my chance.
The interior of the bedroom he’d sneaked into was much the same as the living room. Plain grey wallpaper without a single pattern, a flat navy bedspread. A bone-thin, wispy mood lamp on an iron nightstand. The only difference, if any, was that this wall at least had a single straight shelf mounted on it — not quite a painting, but something.
There was nothing worth looking at in the room. He swept it with a glance anyway, then made to leap up onto the bed. Or rather — that was the plan. His jumping strength wasn’t quite there yet. The fist-sized gray cat managed only to sink his claws into the mattress cover.
Mio grunted and clawed his way up as if scaling a rock face, barely making it onto the blanket. Just as he’d expected, the man’s phone lay neatly on the bed in its owner’s absence.
Good, good. Everything’s going smoothly.
His mood lifted so much that a little cry escaped on its own. His tail, flat against the surface, swayed in a slow, lazy wag. He extended his right white front paw and tapped at the screen. The sleeping phone woke, the screen brightening.
[Please enter your password.]
Genius cat Mio read the words on the screen, then trembled with tiny shivers of excitement, his whole little body — the same size as the phone itself — quivering in glee.
I knew it. I knew this would happen — that’s why I kept a very close eye on that man’s phone while he was holding me yesterday. Even when he was babbling nonsense about buying the most expensive princess bed in the store for his cat, Mio had stayed still and obedient in his arms without getting angry.
It was an entirely adult act — abandoning even his own comfort for the sake of his goal, by any means necessary. There was only one goal. The phone password.
It was a matter of getting one over on a man who would never in his wildest dreams imagine that the cat he’d brought home would be using his phone.
He tapped the screen once more quickly before it could go dark. He’d never used a phone before, but he’d watched his hyungs use theirs plenty of times — this much shouldn’t be hard.
The password was 486. What kind of NIS agent uses a password this short? He’d been repeating it over and over right up until he fell asleep last night, to the point that pressing the pads of his front paw felt like it would automatically produce 486.
Mio confidently pressed the number 4 on the keypad.
[451]
Why did I press 4 and get 451?
Chae Mio, using a phone for the very first time in his life, had no concept of a “typo.” The only things Mio had ever been given to play with were cat toys and several hundred books. Not one of those books had ever told him what to do when a number other than the one he pressed appeared. Thrown off by the unexpected outcome, Mio pressed 8 next.
[4515]
To make matters worse, the typos kept coming. Of course they did. Mio stared blankly down at the numbers that bore no resemblance to his intentions, then gradually tilted his round little head to the side. After a moment of thought, he gently flipped over his right paw and peered at it — and understood.
So that’s why.
Mio’s paw pads consisted of five plump, soft pink toe beans and the short, white, fluffy fur tucked between the gaps of those pads. Undeniably adorable — but utterly useless for anything requiring precise touch. An extreme little paw, maximally cute and minimally functional.
Oh for — this is so annoying.
