“The house is all built. May, come here. If you don’t come out, we’re going to the vet right now.”
He had been trying to be mature about it and ignore him — but neutering was something he could not ignore. Mio shot up from beneath the sofa, tensed every muscle in his throat, and screamed back at the top of his lungs.
“Myaaang!”
The moment the cry died down, the man’s low laughter came drifting over the sofa and tickled Mio’s ears.
“I wonder if he actually understands and hates it.”
Muttering to himself, the man abruptly shoved his hand beneath the sofa. Mio shrieked inside his own head — and was snatched up in an instant. All this time he could grab him this easily…… Every word asking him to come out had been nothing but pleasantry.
Thirsty. His throat was so parched and burning it was enough to wake him from sleep.
Cheongmyeong, who had been lying straight on his back in bed, picked up his phone to check the time. He had left the brightness at maximum, and in the pitch-black of the night it was like a flash going off directly into his eyes.
“Ugh……”
He pressed his eyelids and groaned, then barely managed to pull himself upright. He tossed the phone loosely onto the mattress and opened the door. The body in a comfortable white T-shirt and black pants was solid — but right now he was a patient.
Alphas as a secondary gender were incomparably superior to betas in physical ability. Not only in muscle strength, elasticity, and endurance — their cellular regeneration was also ten times that of an ordinary person, so a typical stab wound healed in about five days. Considering it would take an ordinary person at least a month, being born an alpha was, truly, a blessing from the gods.
“Some blessing.”
If he’d been a beta, he wouldn’t have been getting stabbed in the first place.
He rubbed his still-aching side. Cheongmyeong had been heading straight for the kitchen — when he abruptly changed direction with a movement that produced not a single sound. There was a reason he was tiptoeing around in his own home.
This morning he had welcomed a lovely new family member, so there was nothing to be done about it. May was small — she needed to eat plenty and sleep well.
“May.”
But checking beside the sofa, the bed he had gone out of his way to buy sat completely empty. He had spotted one that looked almost identical to his own bed, rejoiced that they were truly fated, and bought it — and now this.
Where did she go.
Yu Cheongmyeong’s May was an exceptionally intelligent and remarkable cat — she had figured out on her own, without being taught, the difference between toys, the litter box, and her bed.
She had also distinguished precisely between tap water and filtered water. She had turned her head sharply away as if to say she wouldn’t drink anything but filtered water, and Cheongmyeong, realizing his mistake, had promptly supplied her with filtered water.
Then May would lap up the water with her tiny muzzle and hold out her wet muzzle toward Cheongmyeong’s hand. At first he’d thought she wanted to be touched and had patted her on the head — and earned an adorable little claw mark across the back of his hand. It had all been his own fault.
Sorry, sorry. Daddy’s new to this and doesn’t know better.
When Cheongmyeong apologized sincerely, May had shot him a look as if granting forgiveness, then lightly jumped up and started batting the tissue box on the sofa table with a paw.
How could anything be this brilliantly clever. Moved to the core, Yu Cheongmyeong would wipe her muzzle clean with a tissue — and May would lift her chin and climb onto her cat bed, curl her small body into a circle, and fall asleep.
All of that had happened within half a day. Where else in the world was there a cat like this. At this rate, soon she’d be greeting him with a “you’re home?” when he came back from work.
But the important thing is — she’s not here right now.
The center of the cushion was indented in May’s shape, as if she had been there until just moments ago. He touched the surface — warmth still remained. Cheongmyeong was gauging how much time had passed since May had left the spot, when he let out a hollow laugh and rubbed the back of his neck.
Using occupational instincts on a house cat is taking it a bit far.
It was the moment he straightened up from his bent posture. Cheongmyeong sensed a presence that shouldn’t be there. Someone is here.
Not a cat — it was the sound of a person’s footsteps. The sound of bare feet touching the floor and slowly lifting away. And the sound of skin grazing faintly along the wall reached his ears with sharp sensitivity.
There’s an intruder. But he had just woken up, so he had nothing in hand. The dressing room where his weapons were kept — the intruder was closer to it.
To think someone could get into his own home without leaving a single trace.
Cheongmyeong was an alpha who had been rolling around as a field agent for eight years. A veteran whose sharpness, instincts, and perceptiveness were beyond words — and yet he had caught not even a hint of the intrusion. The other party was undoubtedly someone remarkable, whether in nerve or skill.
Damn, what kind of bastard dares to……
Cursing internally, he spun swiftly toward where the presence was coming from. Someone brazenly breaking into his home was a first — but he had encountered similar situations dozens of times. His chest and heart, faced with a crisis, were remarkably calm. He looked around steadily — and where his gaze landed.
“……!”
There was a man staggering and swaying from side to side like a newborn giraffe. Judging by the slenderness of his legs relative to his height, his frame itself was on the slim side — but his appearance was not so frail that he couldn’t stand. Furthermore — this was Yu Cheongmyeong’s home.
“Who sent you.”
Cheongmyeong murmured in a low voice, keeping his gaze fixed in place as he slowly reached his hand behind him and closed it around the remote control lying on the sofa. Even cheap plastic could be sharp if broken, so it was better than bare hands.
If it’s recent — maybe the drug trafficking organization. The mission before that was in Japan, so it could be someone sent from Japan.
Cheongmyeong closed in slowly, pulling the wire of tension taut. As his eyes adjusted to the dark and the distance between him and the man narrowed to two paces — veteran Yu Cheongmyeong’s eyes went wide and he began to waver.
His mind and soul were seized and shaken to the core. The heart that hadn’t trembled even at the presence of an intruder began to thud and pound in an uproar.
Damn — how did these bastards know his type and send a spy like this?
Wherever they had been sent from, it was undoubtedly somewhere extraordinarily meticulous and well-informed. The unclothed man before him was, undeniably, Yu Cheongmyeong’s ideal type to the letter — so much so that he half-wondered if he had been dragged off somewhere and had his brain dissected.
What is this……
Yu Cheongmyeong’s ideal type was someone like a cat walking with quiet dignity along the top of a garden wall on a moonlit night with not a cloud in the sky. It was an absurdly abstract description — but the intruder before him was a beauty drawn as if directly from those words.
Naturally curling jet-black hair. At the outer corners of large eyes that tilted upward like a cat’s, long lashes — soaked with tears from being rubbed repeatedly — were trembling faintly. The word beautiful was not too strong an expression. A beauty striking enough to make even men who had never shown interest in other men turn their heads.
“I…… bathroom.”
“What……?”
Yu Cheongmyeong’s ideal type murmured in a dreamily languid voice, bare skin on full display. The small chin moved slightly, and even in the darkness, bright hazelnut eyes glistening with tears sparkled.
“What did you say — who sent you? What are you talking about…… More importantly, where’s the bathroom? I can’t go in the sand looking like this……”
Go in the sand……?
At the other party’s provocative words, Cheongmyeong swallowed and covered the distance in long strides. His heart was pounding and the gap between them was nearly nothing.
He’s even prettier up close. Even the faint flush on his cheeks and around his eyes visible in the dark. It was a sensation that gave the illusion of a broken clock starting to tick again. An undeniable beauty.
And on top of that — a peculiar…… baby-like scent. Similar to the sunlight smell that came when he buried his nose into May’s belly. May’s whereabouts, now missing. And from this man, the smell of May……
Wait — could this bastard have done something to May?
Under the pretext of calmly sizing up the other party, Cheongmyeong had been scanning him — and then he flipped entirely and grabbed the man’s arm in a hard grip. A high-pitched cry slipped from parted lips.
“Ow……! That hurts! It hurts!”
Yu Cheongmyeong’s right brain was highly developed, as was his left. He naturally translated the man’s voice into a moan in his mind and snapped his eyes wide open.
This won’t do. He couldn’t foolishly fall right into the enemy’s scenario. He was not a person to be taken in by such a transparent scheme. Cheongmyeong was no pushover — and he had no intention of losing his mind and sleeping with the man or letting him plant himself in the house just because this suddenly-appearing man happened to be somewhat his type.
“Showing up naked in this house — what exactly do you want. My life?”
“What are you on about…… I just want to use the bathroom! That small thing over there can’t be a human toilet!”
But every last one of Yu Cheongmyeong’s assumptions was blown apart. There was no gesture that stirred his protective instincts, no mournful gaze. Instead there was only an insult directed at him. The man he had expected to burst into tears pointed in a direction — and there stood the bathroom, in perfectly fine and spotless condition. It had even been remodeled when he moved in last year. He had gone through considerable trouble to buy this home — and for a split second Cheongmyeong’s temper flared, the vein in his temple rising as his voice went up.
“What do you mean small? It’s 33 pyeong!”
“Then where is it. Do I have to go there? I need to pee. I need to go right now, it’s urgent!”
The man crossed his slender legs and hunched his body. Broadly it matched his expectations — but the impact of actually receiving it was more than double. He tried to stay composed, but the more the voice continued, the colder the back of Cheongmyeong’s neck went. Pee……?
“I’m dying here. This is insane!”
“……”
