“……So what do I need to do first?”
It felt like being made to apologize against his will. Like a child who knows they did something wrong but can’t bring themselves to admit it cleanly, and drags their feet instead.
Only then did Hwichan let some of the venom drain out of his expression.
“Smell it first.”
“Smell it? What smell.”
Haeshin picked up the ashen cat and buried his nose in the top of its head. A pungent, eye-watering stench hit him immediately.
“Ugh.”
“Salt and filth. There’s even something like braised fish smell in there.”
“My stomach is turning. If you knew it smelled awful, why make me sniff it on purpose!”
“You have to smell it to know how bad it is.”
Honestly, the ways this person has of making others suffer. You’re the type who has to eat spoiled food to realize it’s gone off.
“We’ll need to wash it first.”
Haeshin abandoned his search for a ladder and went into the storage room to find a basin big enough to put a cat in. Before long, he came out carrying a large red rubber tub, wide enough to fit his entire upper body, and set it down in front of Hwichan.
Somewhere along the way, the embarrassment from the night before had dissolved into the mood around them. As if nothing had happened at all.
“Bring the cat inside. Let’s wash it together in there.”
***
Now he understood why bathing a cat was called doing the laundry.
Haeshin wrung out the water from his thoroughly soaked clothes with a sigh. Hwichan, who had been spraying water from the showerhead beside him, had his fringe completely drenched and drooping like strands of seaweed.
Noticing Haeshin starting to flag with exhaustion, Hwichan let out a small laugh.
“Look at your face. What a sight. Who told you to go bringing a cat home without thinking.”
“Anyone watching would think I said I was keeping it. If I’d left it at the harbor it might have frozen to death. Nobody feeds cats there, and everyone hates them because of the fish market. I thought Samsam Island was better than the harbor, so I brought it.”
“Whatever your reasons — if you’re bringing an animal onto the island, you should at least check whether it’ll settle in here properly.”
Listening to it, he couldn’t say it was wrong. He felt a twinge of guilt. Not toward the cat — toward Hwichan. The little furball had no idea what it had just been through, and was busy flattening its ears sideways and grooming itself.
“Give it a name.”
“Shin Hwichan.”
“That’s my name.”
“I don’t care. I’m naming the cat Shin Hwichan too.”
Having named the cat Shin Hwichan, Haeshin turned to it with exaggerated indignation and began venting his grievances.
“You’ve got a perfectly fine face — so why do you put me through this. If you’re going to look like that, at least have the decency to be cute about it. I go out of my way to look after you and not even a single word of thanks, honestly.”
At that, Hwichan raised an eyebrow and asked,
“That’s directed at the cat, right?”
“Of course it’s directed at the cat.”
Of course it isn’t. It’s directed at you. What could this tiny creature possibly have done to deserve a scolding?
You have no idea I dragged myself out of bed early in the morning, exhausted, to rummage through the storage room just to sort out your building’s electrical panel. And you mock me for being short, and bring a cat over and subtly use it to give me grief. It’s hard to believe you’re the same person who pressed his lips to my forehead on that boat yesterday.
He was infuriating — and yet, at the same time, the fact that they were now close enough for him to show up early in the morning dragging a grimy cat made something warm tickle quietly inside him. Haeshin shook his head and scattered the feeling that kept swinging between excitement and hurt.
“Go wash up and come back. I’ll give you a fresh towel.”
“Alright. You’re washing up too, right, hyung?”
“Why — were you going to suggest we wash together again?”
Hwichan’s face scrunched at the memory as he clicked his tongue.
“I must have become comfortable enough around you for you to want to see me naked again?”
That single sardonic remark brought together the vision of that impressive body he’d seen before and what had happened on the boat yesterday, flashing one after the other in his mind. Haeshin’s hands, working to dry the cat’s fur, moved with unnecessary urgency for no real reason.
“If you have time to spare, come up with a name for the cat.”
Hwichan said this as he peeled off his soaked top, the fabric damp enough to show skin through it. Still, genuinely, something to look at.
“I already gave it one. Shin Hwichan.”
“Keep that up and I’ll catch a seagull one of these days, name it Lee Haeshin, and make sure you watch.”
“Hey! You’re a cat — why am I a seagull?!”
“You chatter. Squawk squawk.”
It was probably a joke, but somehow it felt entirely like something he’d actually do.
A seagull would be getting off easy — he could just as easily show up with a bug, or a sea cucumber, or a sea squirt, and declare it Lee Haeshin.
Haeshin’s face went bright red as he mumbled in a small voice.
“Then just call it Patches.”
“Boring.”
Hwichan let out a short laugh. And even now, that smile was pretty enough to catch his eye. On an ordinary day he was as tightly wound as a wrung-out towel, but the moment he smiled he was a cool, open-faced handsome person.
If you smiled like that more often, you’d look less like a miserable person dragged to an island by an uncle’s nagging, and more like a traveler who packed a single camera and came looking for something romantic. For no particular reason, Haeshin’s chest stirred, and he let out a loud yelp.
“What do you want me to name it, then? You name it!”
“If you know any merman names, go ahead.”
Whether it was the deliberate teasing or not, his hand must have tensed without realizing — the cat bit his finger as he dried its fur, then gave its whole body a good shake.
Haeshin jumped with a startled “Ow!” and in that gap, the ungrateful little furball leapt up onto the living room sofa and began grooming itself.
Maybe it’s because the name is Shin Hwichan. It’s already living up to its name. This is exactly why naming things well matters.
“I don’t know any merman names.”
“Oh, is that right? You said you had no friends — I guess that was true.”
“Just go with Patches.”
He’d tried, but the sulkiness came through anyway. Haeshin got up wiping his damp hands on a towel, and Hwichan, who had been watching idly through the gap in the bathroom door, poked his head out just as he was about to change his trousers and added,
“Call it Jinju, then.”
“Jinju?”
“Mermaids cry pearls, don’t they.”
My tears become pearls. Where does he keep picking up these kinds of tales.
“I looked it up — mermaid folklore. Apparently that’s in there. Tears turning into pearls.”
“If my tears were pearls, I’d have been rich ages ago!”
“You brought it home through blood, sweat, and tears — so Jinju it is.”
With that, the sound of running water started from the bathroom.
Haeshin held the cat in his arms and stared at the closed bathroom door for a long moment. Still grumbling, but inwardly the name must have pleased him — he kept turning it over quietly to himself. Jinju, Jinju……
The one the name actually belonged to, however, seemed to find this stuffy indoor space disagreeable. The cat paced back and forth in front of the front door, scratching at the linoleum with its claws, then widened its already round eyes even further at the sight of rain beginning to pour outside.
With Hwichan shut away in the bathroom and gone quiet, stillness settled over the space. Haeshin looked out at the rain beyond the window with a complicated, restless heart, then turned to the cat and spoke.
“Sorry, Jinju. For being thoughtless.”
Jinju was too busy tracking the rain outside with candy-bright eyes to pay much attention.
“I’ll let you use my place at least until you’re grown and ready to be on your own — for Hwichan’s sake if nothing else. But no longer than that.”
In response came a long, drawn-out mrrrow. Almost like a protest at the terms of a limited arrangement.
