I'll Find Him
When Sapsaree laid out his fierce determination, Hoesaegi and Kkamnyangi scoffed at him.
"Sapsaree, even we couldn't find him, meow."
If the owners of such towering reputations—Silver Rain and Shadow—couldn't find him, then nobody could.
Kkamnyangi piled on.
"Don't waste your strength."
Meaning, of course: there was no way a dog like him would succeed.
But Sapsaree only turned his round black eyes on Lee Jun, poking the dirt with a forepaw.
"Hyungnim. I'll look for him. Please give me Tan's scent."
"I'm telling you, you won't find him."
"Hyungnim, let's try going to Tan's old house, meow."
The cats tried to talk Sapsaree down.
We know Sapsaree's strong, meow. But searching is a different kind of hard, meow.
Hoesaegi, who had never once seen Sapsaree conduct a search, looked at him and let out a small puff of a sigh. Quietly enough that Sapsaree wouldn't notice, of course.
Tsk. The kid just thinks we look cool running around, so he wants in. He's going to be crushed when he comes up empty.
Kkamnyangi pictured Sapsaree's tail drooping in defeat and sighed as well—a tiny motion, meant for Hoesaegi alone.
The two cats locked eyes and gave the smallest shake of their heads.
For this, at least, they were of one heart and mind.
"All right. Let's give it a try. We'll search one more time, and if he really isn't there, we'll go to the old house."
Lee Jun called the owner from where he stood.
The frantic owner picked up at once, and answered in a voice already sinking with disappointment.
"Ah. I see."
The words carried a quiet disbelief, as if to say: you think you can find him that way?
"We have to try everything we can. Their sense of smell is more incredible than you'd think. Who knows? They might sniff Tan out of some deep hiding place."
"Hahh. If only that were true."
Lee Jun and the others went straight to the owner's home and gathered Tan's traces—the cat tree, a cushion, toys, a few articles of clothing.
Sapsaree moved through the rooms, taking in the smells. Watching him, the owner held a worn fish plush out to Lee Jun.
"This is Tan's comfort toy."
Sapsaree snuffled at it, committing the scent to memory, then turned to Lee Jun.
"Hyungnim, I'm going to find him."
That was when Hoesaegi pointed at the window with a small forepaw.
"There was fur over there, meow. Tan's fur, meow."
"There was fur over there?"
"That's right, meow. But we were blocked by a high wall, meow."
Sapsaree walked to the window, sniffed, and nodded.
"Hoesaegi-hyung is right. It's the same smell."
"Then he definitely ran that way."
"I'll find him."
"All right. Let's go down."
Kkamnyangi fell in behind Hoesaegi, and Lee Jun followed Sapsaree the same way the two cats had always followed each other.
Sapsaree left the apartment building and took up the scent. Slowly, but with every ounce of his concentration—tail still, the world narrowed to nothing but the trail of smell.
Nose almost glued to the ground, he sorted through the odors boring into his muzzle until only Tan's remained, and walked on after it.
Then, all at once, the dog who had seemed so careful exploded forward.
His paws hammered the earth. Hoesaegi, chasing after him, kicked up his own speed and shouted as he ran.
"Sapsaree, you can't run that fast, meow. You have to follow the scent slowly, meow."
"He's right. If you're hasty like that, searching gets harder. You'll lose the trail!"
But the dog racing out ahead of them said nothing at all. Whether he hadn't heard or was only pretending not to, Sapsaree poured everything into the run.
Paws thundered. The lighter patter of cat feet followed. The three of them tore along in a wild, headlong rush.
Kkamnyangi, flying along behind Sapsaree without a hitch, called out.
"Sapsaree, let's check over there too."
Tan's scent had drifted from between the apartment buildings they had just passed. Sapsaree ignored him and kept sprinting.
"He—he might be in there, you know."
Kkamnyangi muttered it to himself and ran on after him. Hoesaegi leaned in as they ran and whispered.
"Kkamnyangi, you're going to have to be the understanding one. Sapsaree doesn't know what a search even is, meow."
"Hah. Yeah, that must be it. You're supposed to check every good hiding spot."
"If Sapsaree gives up, we'll come back and search properly, meow."
"Deal."
Hoesaegi and Kkamnyangi followed Sapsaree with their eyes full of every place Tan might be hiding, cataloguing as they went, and they never stopped muttering.
"He must think Tan's scent is so strong here he can just find him right away."
"Seems like it, meow."
They watched Sapsaree pounding along with looks of pure exasperation. A proper search was supposed to be calm. Methodical. Painstaking. At this rate, the scent would vanish at some point and he would be crushed.
That, at least, was what the cats believed.
And sure enough, that moment arrived.
Sapsaree, who had been tearing along as if possessed, stopped dead in his tracks.
"Ah-ah-ah, we're going to crash, meow!"
Thud. Hoesaegi slammed into Sapsaree's planted legs and went sprawling. Thump. Kkamnyangi went down right after him, colliding with Hoesaegi's body and Sapsaree's legs both.
Hoesaegi pulled a face.
"Kkamnyangi, that hurts, meow."
"Ah—sorry. But why'd this Sapsaree stop all of a sudden?"
Not Sapsaree. This Sapsaree. Kkamnyangi had well and truly lost his temper. He had been trying to teach the proper way to search, and he had been ignored—and then Sapsaree had stopped cold and they had crashed into him. Of course Sapsaree hadn't meant for any of it to happen, but Kkamnyangi's head was throbbing all the same.
He rubbed his skull with both forepaws and glared daggers at Sapsaree.
Ordinarily Sapsaree would have felt that stare and turned around at once. He didn't so much as twitch. Only his nose moved, a faint, careful trembling.
He stood like that for a while. Then he started forward again—this time very, very slowly.
"His nose is right on the ground. It's dragging. Hey, that's going to hurt if you scrape it!"
"Sapsaree, that's going to hurt your nose, meow."
The headbutt mishap had left them in a foul mood, but Hoesaegi and Kkamnyangi were still worried about him. Sapsaree ignored them this time too.
"Sapsaree, can you not hear us, meow?"
"Leave him. He's doing that because he's embarrassed."
"Embarrassed about what, meow?"
"Can't you tell from the way he's acting? He lost Tan's scent. That's why. He's ashamed."
"Ah, is that it, meow? Sapsaree, that happens, meow. You can lose a trail while you're searching, meow."
"Yeah, Sapsaree. It happens. Nobody's good at searching from the start."
They had been cheerfully talking behind Sapsaree's back—but the moment he looked crestfallen, words of comfort came out of their mouths on their own.
And then.
Sapsaree's snorts grew fierce. His breathing turned rough. He pressed forward with the air of a dog on fire, and some ten minutes later they arrived at a place with a very high wall.
Sapsaree was standing on the opposite side of the very wall where Kkamnyangi and Hoesaegi had turned back.
The cats realized it and shook their little heads.
"Sapsaree, Tan can't come here, meow. He can't get over that wall, meow."
"Hoesaegi's right. There aren't many cats who can climb that."
"That's right. Only me, Kkamnyangi, Norangi, and Milo can get over it, meow."
Hoesaegi even went so far as to name who could manage the wall. Sapsaree still pretended not to hear, and walked on.
Hoesaegi and Kkamnyangi sighed and exchanged a look—a look that said there was nothing to be done. They decided to watch and see how far Sapsaree would go.
Meanwhile, about five minutes away at a cat's pace, in the basement of an apartment building, two cats were terrorizing a third.
A fairly large cat, yellow from nose to tail, swung a hind leg in a lazy, insolent arc.
"Hey! Who the hell are you?"
"……"
The black cat hiding between the boxes shrank himself even smaller and hung his head.
Then, suddenly, there was a thwack. The cat standing beside the yellow one had kicked the box next to the black cat. He was white all over, except for a black tail.
The startled black cat crouched and pushed farther back, and farther still. But he was already against the wall, and there was almost nowhere left to go. He trembled, shrinking himself smaller and smaller.
The yellow cat took another step closer and kept talking.
"I said, who are you? Who do you think you are, coming into our turf?"
"Hey, Mangchi. Hold up. This one looks familiar."
"Familiar? There's no—wait. Hold on. Looking at that back, I think of a really, really nasty piece of work."
"Doesn't that back look like Shadow's?"
"Yeah. That Shadow."
Mangchi's molars ground together. He glared at the black cat.
"Geondal—m'in a rotten mood anyway. Le's jus' work that one over."
The words came mashed through clenched fangs. Geondal, I'm in a foul mood anyway—let's take it out on that one.
"Yeah. Good. I'm hungry and I feel like garbage, so let's just beat the hell out of him."
Geondal-i, agreeing from Mangchi's side, sneered as he laughed. The two of them closed in on the black cat slowly, tapping nearby objects with their tails as they walked. At every little tap, the black cat's back flinched. Watching it, Mangchi and Geondal-i snickered.
"Geondal. Me, I feel so, so good at times like this."
"Same. He knows he's about to be turned to pulp, that's why he's like that. Keh-heh-heh."
The black cat couldn't stop shaking. His heart felt like it would burst. He had been so, so scared these past few days, hiding and hiding again, and in the end he had been found.
Wh-what do I do? What do I do?
His mind seemed to go white.
At last their shadows slid over his head. There was nowhere to run. I'm going to get beaten here until I go to the Cat Star. That's what happens, right?
With no hope in sight, the black cat squeezed his eyes shut.
Please, don't let it hurt too much.
He waited for the pain to come.
And then.
Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!
A dog's bark drifted in from far away.
No. Not far. The bark was only quiet. It was right nearby. It had to be.
Mangchi and Geondal-i, terrifying as they were, heard it too. Mangchi, a forepaw already raised to strike Tan, turned his head toward the entrance the sound was coming from.
"That's a dog. He's not coming this way, right?"
"Hey, you ever seen a dog come down here? And even if he does, what's that weakling gonna do?"
"True enough. From the way he's barking, he's got no strength in him at all."
"If he comes here, even better. We'll beat him too."
"Yeah. Let's. Heh heh heh. Been a while since I'll get to feel this good."
"Right. Let's pretend this one is Shadow and pay him back for everything that bastard did to us, exactly as it was."
"You're on!"
Just as Mangchi and Geondal-i closed in on Tan, there was a crash. Then something came charging in a frenzy. The two of them started to turn toward the sound—
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Mangchi and Geondal-i were sailing through the air.
They were cats who prided themselves on a long jump. But this was no leap of their own making, and screams tore from their throats as some unknown force flung them.
"Wh-whaaa?"
"Uwaaaaah!"
Then they hit. Flung down like sacks, Mangchi and Geondal-i groaned against the floor.
"Nngh—ah, that hurts."
"Ah, dammit, that really hurts."
They had landed hard on their rumps. Their faces twisted and they shouted.
"W-who is it?!"
"Who is it? Who the hell just threw us?!"
"Hey. You two. Didn't I tell you not to let me catch sight of you?"
Their ears twitched.
"That—that voice sounds really familiar."
"Y-yeah. My butt hurts, so I'm having weird thoughts. I remember what Shadow said to me."
"Whaaat? Shadow?"
A voice crashed over them, ringing as if thunder were striking. Mangchi and Geondal-i's heads turned, very slowly, to the side. Creeeak…
Shadow was standing right in front of them.
"Sh-Sh-Sha…"
Mangchi was so stunned he couldn't even finish the name.
"……!"
Geondal-i only worked his mouth. He couldn't make a sound. A terror too vast even for a groan crawled from the top of his head to the tips of his paws.
Then a new voice arrived.
"Long time no see, meow!"
"Si-Silver…"
"Hnk!"
At Hoesaegi's appearance, the cats let go of consciousness altogether. It was the most ridiculous faint the two delinquent cats had ever performed.
Meanwhile, the black cat Tan had grasped that the newcomers were here to save him. He clung to Sapsaree's leg and spoke in a tearful voice.
"Hngh, I was so, so scared! I thought I was going to Cat Star."
"Let's go home. Home is the best thing in the whole world."
Tan slowly shook his head.
"I-I don't know where home is. I can't go home."
The voice was unbearably sad.
"Tan. I know your home. I'll take you there."
A dog he had never met knowing his name—and his home—was surely a strange thing. But Tan, who had just been pulled out of a hair-trigger disaster, couldn't think that far. He was only glad. Glad that someone knew the home he himself could not remember.
"Really?"
"I know Tan's home too, meow."
"I know too."
Hoesaegi and Kkamnyangi chimed in from the side. Only then did Tan become aware of them, and he dipped his head in a bow—because he had felt an aura that made bowing seem like the only possible thing to do.
"Thank you, cat-nims. But this dog-nim said he would take me, so I'll be all right."
Tan squeezed Sapsaree's foreleg even tighter, as if showing him off. Then he looked up at Sapsaree and smiled.
"Heheh."