The Cat-Ear Beanie
"Nabi, Nabi."
"Mmm... mmph...?"
Yuyeon was waking me up...!
Normally I was the one rousing her. I sat up on the bed, blinking blearily like a goldfish, still half-asleep.
A faint sense of injustice prickled at me, but it quickly gave way to embarrassment. I must have caught her bad habit.
The habit of sleeping in.
Once upon a time, waking at six or seven in the morning had been my ironclad routine. Anything less and I would have been late for work. A disciplined life.
But ever since I became a cat beastkin and started living with Yuyeon, that routine had flipped one hundred and eighty degrees.
I used to crawl into bed at ten or eleven without a second thought, lying perfectly still. Now I lay awake under the fluffy blankets, ears twitching, rubbing my drowsy eyes well past two or three in the morning because Yuyeon was still up.
And what did I do while she worked? I would quietly tug her smartphone closer, lose myself in the bright screen, and watch NewTube videos. I wanted to check communities or other social media too, but it was still her phone, so poking around in her personal accounts felt a little too shameless.
Instead I only peeked at my own channel stats or watched clips of real cats swishing their tails, killing time until the glow of the screen finally lulled me to sleep. That was why I now fell into deep slumber only after the deepest part of the night, and why Yuyeon was the one waking me once the sun had already risen.
Isol's video still needed a little more time before it could go live anyway. Uploading raw footage the moment it was filmed was something only amateurs did.
Long, unedited videos would tank the views; modern viewers would never sit through something that boring. Editing cuts, adding subtitles, checking effects—it would take several days at least, she had said.
Not that it mattered. I had plenty of time to wait. I gathered my thoughts and looked at Yuyeon with a face that still hadn't shaken off the sleep.
"What's up, Yuyeon?"
"Ta-da~"
Yuyeon beamed like a child and pulled something out from behind her back with a flourish, waving it right in front of my nose.
A beanie.
But not an ordinary one. It was... quite distinctive.
Normally a beanie sat flat and snug against the head. The one she proudly displayed had two pointed ears sticking straight up, exactly like a cat's.
It wasn't a plain round hat. The sides had been shaped into sharp little peaks positioned precisely where my real cat ears sat—the perfect cat-ear beanie.
"Ah...!"
"It's for you, Nabi! If you wear this, everyone will just think you're a kid with a quirky fashion sense, right?"
Yuyeon's eyes sparkled. Clearly she had bought it to hide my constantly twitching real ears.
The tail was easy enough to tuck under loose clothes, but those ever-moving animal ears on top of my head were impossible to conceal. In that sense, this specially shaped beanie was tailor-made for me.
"Try it on, Nabi!"
"Okay."
I took the soft beanie from her hands and slowly pulled it down over my head. My ears slipped inside without any resistance; it fit perfectly. I touched the tips of the fabric ears and spoke with genuine admiration.
"It fits great, Yuyeon...!"
"I'm so glad!"
She clapped her hands together as if it were her own achievement. I liked it too, but a small question popped into my head.
"Why did you buy this, though?"
Yuyeon smiled brightly at my tilted head.
"You need to go outside sometimes! How long are you going to stay cooped up in the house? If you stay inside all the time you'll turn into a gloomy weirdo!"
"Ahaha..."
I could only manage an awkward laugh at her confident declaration.
She had a point. Since turning into a cat beastkin, I had never once stepped beyond the front door in this form. The only time I had gone out was sneaking next door to my old apartment in full cat shape. I thought of the stuffy indoor air and the world I could only watch through windows.
That must be why Yuyeon was chattering excitedly while I adjusted the beanie, promising to show me the wide world outside.
"Now let's get you dressed...!"
"Oh!"
With an excited grin she pulled out the pile of children's clothes she had bought from Gaji Market. It was that popular local secondhand app where neighbors traded cute used items.
The vast sea of listings naturally included plenty of kids' clothes. Until now I had only worn Yuyeon's oversized T-shirts, which hung down to my knees like a loose dress—an awkward, baggy home-wear look.
But not anymore.
Once I was dressed in the adorable children's outfit she had carefully chosen and topped with the cat-ear beanie, the reflection in the mirror looked exactly like a stylish elementary-school student. No one would ever guess I was a cat beastkin if I walked outside like this.
We finished getting ready and stood at the front door. Yuyeon gently took my smaller hand, her eyes shining.
"Let's go, Nabi!"
"Yeah..."
For the first time I stepped outside in my beastkin form. Before, I had only gone out when I was fully a cat. Maybe that was why the height of my viewpoint felt so strange.
Until recently I had been pressed low to the ground, looking up at nothing but people's ankles and car wheels. Now the view stretched out high and open, so different from that old low-to-the-ground perspective. The same world, yet the sensation changed completely depending on where you stood.
Still, one thing puzzled me as we walked: why was Yuyeon in such an unusually good mood today?
I didn't have to wonder long.
"I got my paycheck today! First one I've ever received in my whole life!"
"Paycheck?"
"Yeah. I'm doing that public-service job, remember?"
"Oh, right!"
A whole month had already passed. Time really flew.
Her very first paycheck... I was quietly curious how much it was. I glanced up at her while we walked.
"How much did you get, Yuyeon?"
"After taxes, about a million won? Not that much, really."
She smiled shyly, but for only four hours of work a day it was actually quite decent. Government or local-government jobs tended to pay fairly, including weekly allowances, without the shady deductions smaller companies pulled.
I had heard that some ruthless small businesses used "comprehensive wage" excuses to make people work ten or twenty hours of overtime with no extra pay. Compared to that nightmare, Yuyeon's first paycheck felt honest and precious.
"I'll buy you something delicious today, Nabi!"
"Thanks."
I was a cat who knew how to show gratitude!
If someone treated you, you repaid them—ideally more than you received. That was basic adult decency. Later I would secretly send a big donation to her channel or account, I decided.
Yuyeon had no idea, but I actually had over a hundred million won saved in an emergency account. It was money I had earned through blood, sweat, and tears in my previous life, but in this tiny cat body it was useless—I couldn't even access it directly.
The one saving grace was that I was still comfortable with smartphones and mobile banking. Internet payments and transfers posed no problem at all.
If this had happened in the old analog days without a smartphone, I wouldn't have been able to withdraw a single won from the bank. My ID photo on file would no longer match my current appearance.
The thought of losing a hundred million that easily sent a small chill down my spine.
If you were going to throw away years of hard-earned money so easily, you might as well gamble it away—at least then you had the slim hope of winning.
Chatting like that, we arrived at the department store.