I Turned Into a Cat
"Ahh..."
I collapsed onto the bed like a doll whose strings had been cut. Every limb felt impossibly heavy, and the mattress seemed ready to swallow me straight through to the floor.
"This is brutal..."
Life in Seoul wasn't merely exhausting. Brutal didn't even cover it — it was a nonstop stretch of hell. The people who scraped by day after day in this city no longer just impressed me; they inspired something close to awe.
For a country boy like me, who'd left the quiet hometown where I'd been born and raised and charged into Seoul on pure impulse, simply matching this city's pace drained me dry at every turn.
Still, they say humans are creatures of adaptation.
Fortunately, I had managed to sink roots into the middle of this strange, cutthroat city, and I was adapting in my own way — grinding it out, day after day.
A big part of that was landing a job by putting my greatest weapon — my specialty — to full use.
My strongest talent had always been language. All through school, I'd never once dropped below a top score on the national exams in Korean or English; I simply had a natural ear for it.
And after grinding myself raw, I could now handle three languages — Korean, English, and Japanese — as fluently as if each were my mother tongue.
In a world where even true bilingual speakers are rare, someone comfortable in three languages is rarer still.
I'd leveraged that clear advantage into a position at a trading company, and I'd been working there ever since.
I was past the green-rookie stage by then, and by scraping together performance bonuses, allowances, and every other scrap of extra pay I could, I was pulling in the equivalent of about five million won a month and working with more fire than anyone.
For someone my age, that was nothing to sneeze at. A pretty solid paycheck.
But today, I had finally taken the resignation letter I'd been carrying next to my heart and thrown it down with my head held high. People always say office workers live with a resignation letter tucked against their chest... I just never expected that cliché to become my story.
Then again, a career isn't supposed to stagnate in one place. You're meant to hop from company to company, jack up your market value, build your résumé, and climb somewhere better!
My current workplace fell short on every count. It simply didn't sit right with me.
I had absolute confidence I could land somewhere far larger and more solid — a proper conglomerate.
And the job market agreed. Plenty of places had already sent out feelers for a talent like mine. I'd even gotten calls from headhunters. It feels a little awkward saying this myself, but I was a capable hire.
This wasn't vanity or narcissism. Looking back at the projects I'd delivered at my last company... I could have been making six million a month. Seven, even! The company just wasn't big enough for that kind of pay grade.
I'd spent the last two years running flat out without looking back, so I figured I'd take this chance to rest for a month or two with my brain completely switched off before hunting for a new job.
With my credentials and three-language track record, companies would be lining up to poach me.
I turned my head and looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.
201X...
Staring at the numbers, a strange feeling washed over me. In just a few more years, I'd be thirty whether I liked it or not. The thought that a piece of my youth was already slipping away left a faintly bitter taste.
To shake off the fatigue crushing my whole body, I picked up my phone and opened the YouTube app. Out of habit, I searched for cat videos and hit play.
When my body and mind were completely wrecked, watching cute animals was my one surefire way to heal.
Watching those little fluffballs wriggle across the screen, I couldn't help the soft, goofy smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth. Why were cats so cute it almost made you cry just looking at them — so genuinely, ridiculously lovable?
Some people called them furry cockroaches, dirty street animals. Not me.
Of course, I wasn't a fan of the so-called Cat Moms who dumped feed on the sidewalk with zero sense of responsibility. As someone who already loved cats enough to think of himself as a butler-in-waiting, I found that kind of behavior hard to stomach.
If you're going to be a person, you live with responsibility! Case in point: as much as I loved cats, I had never actually adopted one.
Living alone already felt like enough of a burden, and I didn't have the confidence to look after a cat for decades. On top of that, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to watch one cross the rainbow bridge with a clear head.
[Myaaaooong~]
Listening to that tiny, adorable meow spill from the speakers, a sudden thought brushed through me — envy.
I wanted to live like that too. No worries, no job anxiety, just one devoted butler waiting on me hand and foot while I lounged in peace.
Compared to the daily war of the morning commute and the blood-drying jungle of office life, sprawling in a sunlit windowsill all day and napping like a cat looked infinitely happier.
"Sooo cuuute~"
Half-drunk on sleep, I mumbled as I sank deeper into the cat video. Dozing off with my phone still lit in front of my face — that had been my sleep habit for years.
In the exact moment my consciousness cut out, I had no idea.
I had no idea that this drowsy bed would be the last moment of my life as an ordinary human — as a healthy, able-bodied man of the Republic of Korea.
Beep-beep-beep—!
Beep-beep-beep-beep—!
Good morning~
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba~ Good morning~
Aaaargh!
The racket tore straight through my eardrums and my eyes snapped open. The phone screen thrashing around on the pillow beside me was flashing and screaming its alarm for all it was worth.
Whoever had composed that song, I wanted to slap them the second I heard it. It was that insufferable.
Honestly, the human who made this morning call deserved some kind of anti-Nobel Peace Prize.
History ought to record them as the single person who most successfully enraged and infuriated every office worker in the country.
And yet, even through the noise stabbing my ears, a gentle, benevolent smile soon spread across my face.
Normally I would have been scrambling out of bed, rushing to get ready for work.
But the situation now was completely different.
Dobby... no — I was free!
I was no longer a corporate livestock pen-bound office worker. I had become an invincible freeloader, free to savor every last corner of time and spirit as I pleased.
Thanks to two years of grinding my soul into the work, my bank account held enough savings that I could sit around doing nothing but breathe for the next several years and still be fine.
I didn't have any expensive, extravagant hobbies, and I wasn't the wasteful type either.
On top of that, I wasn't carrying a family on my shoulders that I had to feed and support.
Maybe it was that cushion of breathing room, but I could sketch out my reemployment plans for the next step in a perfectly calm, unhurried frame of mind.
My ears were starting to ring, so I moved my hand on instinct to shut off the still-blaring alarm.
But something was wrong.
The hand in my field of vision... was not a human hand!
"Meow!"
I screamed in pure shock. But what burst out of me was not the deep shout of a young man. A tiny, adorable cat's cry rang through the room and tickled my ears!
What the...!
The lazy, peaceful feeling that had wrapped my whole body a second ago evaporated in an instant. As if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head, every hair stood on end and a chill raced down my spine.
Filling my vision was a white, cotton-ball of a cat paw — covered in soft fur, with little squishy jelly pads...
This couldn't be...
I couldn't properly process what was happening.
"Brain freeze" was the only phrase that fit. The whole thing was so unreal I almost convinced myself the reality in front of me was fake — that I was stuck in a nightmare.
I tried to pinch my cheek.
But no matter how hard I tried, a round, soft cat paw simply wasn't built to pinch a cheek the way human fingers could.
The plush front paw just pressed weakly against my face, squishing it like I was making biscuits.
That aside...
These pink jelly pads really were tempting.
I couldn't help thinking something that stupid.
And just like that, in a single moment, I had become a cat.
Without the slightest warning, at that.