Cats Really Can't Do 'Stay' After All (4)
We'd left the comic cafe, but it was still a little early for dinner, which meant I had to kill some time with Chae Dayeon.
In the meantime.
"Hoooo..."
The moment we stepped outside, we weren't alone anymore. Maybe that was enough to kill her heat — Chae Dayeon's expression had eased considerably.
"Dayeon, so what do you want to do?"
"When are we eating?"
"Around six, I guess?"
"An hour... wanna just wander around?"
Unlike dogs, who come with a mandatory daily walk the second you start raising them, cats have no such obligation. A cat that actually wants to go for walks is called a "walking cat" and treated like some mythical beast.
Chae Dayeon was pretty much the same.
"Then let's walk. If we run into an arcade or something, we can go in and play a few games."
"There's an arcade?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go."
Judging by the fact that she'd slept thirteen hours at home, I figured she never exercised at all. And when you ran your hands over her, there wasn't a hint of muscle — every inch of skin was soft and squishy.
So Chae Dayeon being the one to suggest a walk was surprising enough that even I, who didn't particularly enjoy exercise, ended up wandering the streets of downtown Anyang with her.
"Dayeon. Hey... is everything okay down there?"
"Down where?"
"Between your legs. When I touched you earlier it felt pretty soaked. Doesn't it get in the way when you walk?"
"Mmm... it's a little damp, but I'm fine."
She ducked her head and stared at the space between her own thighs, then decided it really was fine and came trotting along to match my pace.
"Doesn't your head hurt after sleeping thirteen hours straight?"
"Not really? Even if I get up there's nothing to do. I'm tired all week, so I just sleep it off in one go on the weekend. Don't you?"
"I..."
I used to.
Ever since I'd gotten the HR Management App, I'd been meeting women every weekend, and my sleep had dropped off a cliff. Not that I felt particularly tired. Maybe that was thanks to all the stamina-related settings I'd jammed into the admin page.
"Not really."
"Must have good stamina. Is that why you do it so much?"
"Do what?"
"Sex."
"......"
Her voice wasn't that loud, but it still wasn't a word you just dropped in the middle of the street. I flinched and glanced around, but luckily nobody was walking nearby.
And Chae Dayeon just tilted her head a little, looking at me like she couldn't understand why I was making such a fuss.
Flustered as I'd been... that innocent little head-tilt with that completely guileless expression was so cute I reached for her face without thinking.
Chae Dayeon watched my hand come toward her and didn't move, letting me give her cheek a light pinch.
Soft.
It was like sinking my fingers into a freshly pounded rice cake. I kept kneading it, and her expression didn't change at all.
"Mmphnnn..."
She mumbled something, but I ignored it and kept playing with her cheek, and she seemed to get a little pissed.
...Chomp!
"Ugh..."
Just like before, she clamped her teeth down on my hand, then looked up at me with that same innocent face, as if she hadn't meant any harm at all.
...Even a dog-cat still knows how to hiss, I guess.
I could've just left it, but cats... in a slightly different sense from foxes, they just keep making you want to put your hands on them.
Using the same hand she'd just bitten, I touched her cheek again — stroking it gently this time, no pinching. Wondering if this was okay.
"Nnnnngh..."
Her eyes went a little unfocused. She tipped her chin up and let out a low, rumbling purr.
The fact that we were doing this on the sidewalk was suddenly so ridiculous I snorted, pulled my hand away, and started walking again.
"Come on. You seemed like you wanted to hit the arcade earlier — want to go straight there?"
"Ung."
Trot-trot-trot.
At the mention of the arcade, Chae Dayeon came pattering over again and fell into step beside me.
We played a few games together at the arcade, lingered to watch some busking over by the plaza, and browsed through clothes I thought would look good on her. After wandering around enough, we ducked into a Korean BBQ restaurant for galbi and took a seat.
"Three servings of galbi, please. Two bowls of rice. Oh — you serve stew with that, right?"
"Yes, we do."
"Great, we'll take that."
I put in a simple order and waited. The burner, the grill, and the meat arrived in that order. I laid the meat on the grill and it started to sizzle. Chae Dayeon stared at the cooking meat the way people zone out in front of a fire.
She didn't so much as glance at the side dishes on the table. That expression was locked onto the meat and nothing else.
And yet I already knew she wouldn't actually eat that much.
"You don't eat much, do you?"
"Probably not."
"How much can you eat?"
"Mm... maybe about half."
"Half? Half of one serving?"
"Ung."
"And you only eat half a bowl of rice too?"
"Ung. Oh, right — want me to scoop half of mine over now?"
She really did have a tiny appetite.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Here."
I transferred the half-bowl of rice she scooped out into my own bowl, then flipped the meat that had just started to brown.
"Woojin, can you eat all this meat?"
"I can eat it. This much is no problem."
"Whoa..."
"What?"
"Just thinking you eat a lot."
Honestly, one serving of galbi was a little light for most guys, wasn't it? All my friends were like that. So when two people went out, you ordered three servings as a baseline and ate one and a half each.
"You're the one who eats too little. That's why you never gain any weight. Don't people around you tell you to put some on?"
"They do, but..."
She gave her own body a once-over, then shook her head.
"I just can't be bothered to eat."
"You can't be bothered to eat?"
"Like... do I really need to go out of my way to eat? I keep thinking it would be nice if there were some kind of pill I could take instead of meals."
"Is there any food you actually like, then?"
"Food I like? Of course there is. I just can't eat much of it."
That seemed to be true. When I held out a piece of fully cooked galbi, she went nom-nom-nom and ate it with obvious pleasure.
Come to think of it, she'd lit up last time when I suggested samgyeopsal, too. And the substitute menu we'd switched to had been hamburger steak — still meat, more or less. She liked meat. She just had a small appetite, and there was nothing to be done about that.
"Can I ask how much you weigh?"
"My weight? I haven't checked recently so I don't know... probably low forties?"
"Forty kilos? Low forties, so like forty-one, forty-two?"
"Probably."
I'd cut the pieces pretty small, but even that seemed a bit big for her mouth. She bit a piece of galbi clean in half as she answered.
"This is me after putting on weight recently, by the way."
"That's you after putting on weight?"
"Back in college I was... no. When I was job-hunting I was so out of it and so busy I barely ate. I dropped into the thirties back then."
"Hey... that sounds like it would've been bad for your health."
"I got a checkup and they said I was fine. I guess when you're short, weighing less is just—"
She froze. She'd brought up her own height, and now she was glaring at me with a look that said she was about to snap.
"What? What?"
"You just thought something weird, didn't you."
"Me? No?"
"......"
"Eat your galbi."
"Ung."
I held out another well-done piece, and the irritated look vanished, replaced by a peaceful one. She was genuinely hard to read.
And yet. Watching her nom-nom-nom her way through the galbi I'd grilled for her was so purely cute that I started thinking maybe I didn't need to understand her at all. Maybe I was the one who should just adapt.
"How's the galbi here? Good?"
"Ung. It's good."
This was why people said a pretty face was its own plot armor.
Anyway.
"It's not about the height. Just looking at you, you seem way too skinny."
"Do I look that skinny?"
"You're underweight, right?"
"By BMI, yeah, but it's not that far off the normal range. If I gained like two more kilos I'd be in it."
The fact that she knew that without even needing to calculate it told me it had been a sore spot of sorts. Bringing it up any further would just sour her mood, so I decided to drop the weight talk.
But then Chae Dayeon went and said—
"It doesn't bother me or anything, so I don't care... but does it bother you?"
"Me? Why would I be bothered that you're skinny?"
"I heard sometimes if a girl's too skinny, it hurts the guy during sex."
"......"
For a second I thought I'd misheard. I hadn't. Thankfully — if you could call it that — the sizzle of the grill and the noise from the surrounding tables swallowed most of her voice before it could carry.
"...No, uh... it doesn't. It doesn't really."
"Yeah?"
"You... you don't weigh much, but you've actually got a decent amount of flesh on you, and you're soft. It doesn't hurt."
I'd dropped my voice first, and Chae Dayeon naturally dropped hers to match. It didn't seem like she was doing it because the topic was particularly explicit. More like she was unconsciously mirroring me.
"Mm... I see. I was a little worried about that."
"Why?"
"You go at it really hard. I thought maybe it hurt you too."
"No. It's fine. You're actually surprisingly..."
Was "surprisingly" the right word?
"...surprisingly, your ass and your chest are, yeah. You know."
A hundred and fifty-five centimeters. Barely over forty kilos. On paper she sounded like she'd be nothing but bones, but as I'd just told her, Chae Dayeon actually had a surprising amount of meat on her.
A chest that, surprisingly, filled out a B-cup. Plump, well-padded thighs. A soft, rounded ass that filled your hands.
Was it because her bones were so slender?
"So I don't really need to gain more weight, then."
"You don't need to force yourself to pack it on, no. Building it up healthy through exercise would be better."
"...I hate exercise."
"Yeah, I can tell."
Mentioning exercise made two people pop into my head: Lim Jiwoo and Min Seoeun. Lim Jiwoo seemed to do yoga or something at home for self-care, but Min Seoeun had been an actual elite athlete.
And if I let that thought keep going, I started picturing Chae Dayeon with Lim Jiwoo, or even Chae Dayeon with Min Seoeun...
"Ah, I'm full."
"Don't force it."
"Ung. I'm done."
True to her word about her tiny appetite, she hadn't eaten much at all before she set her chopsticks down.
"Give it here. I'll grill."
"No, it's fine. I'm more comfortable doing it myself."
"You've been grilling this whole time. You need to eat too. Give it."
And then she asked for the tongs. I handed them over with a strangely proud feeling, and Chae Dayeon flipped the meat this way and that with her small hands.
I ate the meat she grilled for me with enthusiasm, and once we'd finished dinner we left the restaurant together.
Which meant it was time to go somewhere — my place, her place, or a motel. The second we stepped inside anywhere, we'd be alone, and Chae Dayeon would go into heat. And I wasn't exactly eager to start moving around so soon after eating.
Which meant the best option right now was, once again, a walk.
"Dayeon."
"Ung?"
"Let's walk a bit before we head in."
"Ung."
We started walking through downtown Anyang again to let the food settle.
Sliiide...
Something wrapped around my arm. It was Chae Dayeon.
Unlike last time, when Lim Jiwoo had casually slipped her arm through mine, Dayeon clamped onto my arm and held on tight.
"I'm cold."