Ch. 26 A Cat With A Lady’s Heart (1)

Si-yul placed me in the car, and I silently sat in the passenger seat and busied myself licking my hind leg. Suddenly, a hand firmly grabbed my limb.

“Myag!” (That hurt!)

Si-yul inspected my foot, and when he saw that the wound was unhealed, his face turned pale and he started yelling at me.

“You still have the wound?! Do you want to die, you ignorant cat!”

My ears rang unpleasantly at the loudness of his voice.

“Myag myag myag!” (Don’t nag me!)

“You’re going to get an infection. Do you know what happens then? The flesh becomes necrotic, and your leg will have to get amputated!”

“Myaaak” (Let go of my leg!)

My anger spiked and I reflexively bit his hand. However, he kept yelling out of concern.

“You think it’s just a leg?! You’re a cat and you don’t even know how scary people can be! Why did you run away from home?”

“…Knnnng.”

“Even if you don’t live with me, you don’t have to live like this, you idiot! I thought you were smart!”

I didn’t ask for his concern, but I couldn’t bring myself to reject him. Not when he had shown up as in his doctor’s coat and slippers for my sake, as if he had come here in a rush. I was wrong, and I was sorry. But I didn’t want to say that.

I turned my nose away from him, but Si-yul’s temper didn’t abate. He stormed out of the car and took something out from the trunk before coming back in.

“Give me your leg!”

The car was equipped with a first aid kit. Si-yul’s brow was furrowed as he worked in scary doctor mode, subverting my efforts to wriggle away from him, and placing disinfectant on my foot and wrapping it in bandages with scary efficiency.

He finished the task, but he wasn’t done with me yet, and he held my body to inspect it once again. This was starting to become troublesome, so I begrudgingly held out my front paws.

“Myang.” (Here.)

My feet were ragged and hairless, and the skin was red where the flesh was exposed. I also had a cut from when I escaped the animal shelter’s carrier. I turned back and licked the wound on my shoulder where I was hit with a stone, to show I was injured there was well.

“What the hell have you been doing?!”

“Myang?” (Running away?)

“Speak!”

“Mii~” (I don’t want to~)

I whipped my head away. In truth, I was too scared to talk as a human after the incident with Ga-eun. My friend freaked out like she had seen a monster from a horror movie.

And yet, Si-yul had no problem at all talking to me like a person. Was this guy alright?

I simply rolled my eyes as he continued to find fault about the state of my health. Being able to ignore something was a cat’s specialty.

“Oh my god, were you in the rain? Do you know how scary it is for a dog or cat to get pneumonia? You didn’t eat anything strange, did you? Ah, well it’s a good thing you don’t need to eat, so you don’t have to worry about poisoning or starving to death—”

“…”

“Are you listening to me?”

Si-yul tried to look directly at me, but I turned my head. His nagging was so annoying. I grumbled inwardly, even thought it was because of Si-yul that I didn’t feel as frayed and broken as before.

“The soles of your feet are all ragged, so how can you assume you’re self-reliant! You thought you could just run away, did you!”

“Hmph!”

“Don’t you know that five out of ten house cats die when they’re out on the streets?”

I really didn’t want to hear this, so I pretended to yawn. Si-yul pinched me on the cheek. He wasn’t happy that I hadn’t given him a single word, and he gave a sharp nudge to my ear.

“Don’t pretend you don’t understand me!”

I made unpleasant rumbly noises at him.

“If someone talks to you, you have to answer!”

“…Kag! Myag myag! Mya mya!” (…Ack! Shut up, shut up! You’re killing me!)

To an outsider, Si-yul must look crazy yelling at a cat to talk. His eyebrow twitched, and he stretched out my cheeks even further with both his hands. I bared my teeth and yowled to intimidate him, but the effort proved humorous rather than scary as he inspected my gums.

“Uugggh! I came looking for you, you! Arrogant! Cat!”

I was mad that he ignored my protests. It was as if he thought, ‘I’m a person, and you’re a cat. So I’m above you!’ Of course, I could never agree to those terms. I was a human being too!

“Eyaoyaong!”

I tried scratching his invasive hands with my claws again, but his work experience made him extremely tolerant to bites and scratches from other animals. He grunted, but he seemed determined to force some manners onto me.

“You should apologize first for causing such a fuss and running away from home! Talking is the least you can do!”

“Myamya…shut up! Who told you to come looking for me? And whether I run away or not, what does it have to do with you? Get your hands off me now!”

“You…! That’s what you choose to say? Even though you’re an animal, you should have a conscience!”

“What’s wrong with my conscience?” I couldn’t resist spitting out with my human voice. Si-yul stretched my cheeks even further. There was a funny mix of human whining and cat whining. I hissed at him as he tried to make eye contact with me.

“You should say sorry!” Si-yul shouted. “You caused your owner and I to—”

“That’s why I ran away!” I finally exploded.

He blinked. “…What?”

“Yeah!”

“Why? Weren’t you happy with your owner?” he said concernedly.

Before I knew it, he let go of his hands on my cheeks, and I rubbed the aching flesh with my paws.

“Ah, it hurts! It’s because of my owner that I—”

“The owner?”

I clamped my mouth shut.

“Why won’t you speak again?”

I averted my eyes. It wasn’t unusual for a cat to like its owner. However, the nuance of the words was the problem.

I liked Tae-il not as an owner, but…as a person of the opposite sex. But it wouldn’t make sense for a cat to say that.

Si-yul looked at me expectantly. “What? I’m good at keeping secrets. You already know that.”

“…”

“Sometimes it’s helpful to say your feelings,” he continued encouragingly.

“Really…?” My ears twitched.

“Yeah. I was just wondering what was so bad that you had to run away.”

Si-yul was a smart and eloquent professional. Come to think of it, if I had a problem and needed counseling, he was the only person I could really go to anyways.

“So…you’ll keep it a secret?” I ventured.

He shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I can tell anyone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, if I say that I heard it from a talking cat in the first place, I’d be the one to go to a mental hospital.”

Yeah, that was true. I took a moment to consider whether to confide in him or not. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I should vent my upset and frustrated mind to Si-yul.

“Well…” I started.

“Mmm.”

“Don’t make fun of me, okay? I’m just asking if this makes sense to you as a person.”

“Of course.”

This felt just like high school, when confessing to someone that I liked them. Si-yul wasn’t the person I was confessing to, but my heart still pounded at the agony of telling another soul.

“I like my owner,” I exhaled.

Si-yul looked unimpressed. “Well, of course you would.”

“Stupid! As a woman!”

“…As a female?”

F-female! I hated that clinical-sounding description. Of all the words, female?!

“You rude bastard! As a woman! A member of the opposite sex! What do mean, a female? I’m a lady!”

“…So you’re in love?”

“Yes!”

“That’s amazing.”

That bastard gave a humored snort, and I puffed my cheeks, furious that I ever thought to tell him my secret. Si-yul then burst into an outright belly laugh, as if he had never seen that kind of expression on a cat before.

While Si-yul wasn’t the type to tell secrets, he definitely was the type to make fun of someone in front of their face.

“Damn it…I shouldn’t have told you anything!” I said furiously.

“Bahaha! Is that why you ran away? Isn’t that weird?”

“Not it’s not…”

“So you ran away from home because you were frustrated with the love that could never be requited.”

“…It’s not that bad!”

However, Si-yul’s words rang true. I didn’t want my feelings for Tae-il to spiral out of control, and running away was my countermeasure against it.

“Hmmm, so that’s why you ran away. It’s a thing for cats…”

“I’m not a cat!”

“So you’re a person?”

I became mute. In Si-yul’s head I could talk and change into a person, but his fixed impression of me was originally a cat.

“What are you?” he inquired.

“…Er.”

“An alien? A remnant from an experiment? Or a supernatural creature like nine-tailed fox? I think the last one is the most plausible. ”

Si-yul was curious about everything about me. The question was whether such life forms could exist in this world, and solving this mystery would be an immense achievement.

“Of course, you’d pretend not to know, right, kitty?”

“Hey! Don’t call me that!”

“You’re a cat, aren’t you? Or, what, is there a name your parents gave you? Myo myo? Mya mya? Mi mi?”

“Uyiiii!”

My hair stood on end, but I knew he was teasing me on purpose. It was a hateful trick to get me riled up and so he could get more information from me. This was a high level of information extraction.