Catfight
Yuyeon's lips curled up in a mischievous grin.
"Hehehehe!"
"Eek!"
I swallowed the scream that threatened to escape and backed away, but my retreat was short-lived. My back met the wall. A dead end. Not that our apartment had any real dead ends, yet here I was, cornered like a rat—or rather, like a cornered cat.
"Put this on... Nabi!"
What Yuyeon held out with both hands, as if presenting a treasure, was a brightly patterned children's outfit. Her latest questionable hobby. Even with our already tight finances, she'd scraped together every last won to buy and hoard kids' clothes.
They were secondhand finds from Gaji Market, so the prices were rock-bottom... but the price wasn't the real issue. The owner of those clothes wasn't Yuyeon. It was me.
Somewhere along the way, I'd been demoted to Yuyeon's personal living dress-up doll.
"No!"
"Aww, Nabi! This one's super cute...! Can't you wear it just once?"
Yuyeon widened her eyes, looking on the verge of tears, her shoulders slumping in an exaggerated pout. Watching her like that, a heavy sigh rose from deep in my chest.
It was a fight I always lost. When she begged so pitifully, I couldn't bring myself to refuse outright. I'd considered blurting out the truth countless times—"Actually, I'm the guy who used to live next door!"—but that would only earn me a one-way ticket to the crazy list, and even if she somehow believed me, I'd lose the only person in this world willing to take me in.
This world wasn't gentle enough for a lone child to survive on their own.
"Fine..."
I dragged my feet forward and gave a reluctant nod. Another day when a man's tearful dignity got mercilessly trampled.
After that soul-crushing dress-up session, time passed. The collab video I'd filmed with I-sol finally went live on the channel. The results were explosive.
My on-screen appearance was the real deal. Comments flooded in, filled with awe and amazement at the clever, natural feline behavior you'd expect from a professional show like Animal Farm.
Watching the footage myself felt oddly surreal. That cat rolling around so cutely on screen... was me?
It was hard to believe, yet I had to admit that clumsy, playful side was undeniably part of me too. After all, I'd been the one rolling and showing off tricks the entire shoot.
The collab turned out to be an even bigger success than expected. Subscriber numbers traced a sharp red upward curve, soaring into the stratosphere.
The front digit had flipped to ten thousand.
I could now call myself a proper YouTuber without too much embarrassment.
In Korea, channels with over ten thousand subscribers were a rare breed among all YouTubers.
Yuyeon could probably introduce herself as a YouTuber with confidence now. Ten thousand wasn't a number you reached on luck alone.
Thanks to the trickle-down effect from I-sol's video, we'd gained real momentum. Nabi and I started planning our next piece of content.
To keep the upward trend going, we moved quickly. In the vast YouTube ecosystem, most collabs were one-offs, and the odds of a big channel like I-sol returning to a tiny hako like ours were basically zero.
Besides, our subscriber counts weren't close enough for mutual benefit from repeated collabs. It was clearly a lopsided deal that favored us.
Our assumptions proved pleasantly wrong. I-sol had no intention of stopping at a single collab video.
I-sol is coming over again?!
"Nabi, Nabi!"
"Got it!"
At Yuyeon's urgent call, I shifted into cat form without hesitation. My vision lowered smoothly, and soft, adorable cat-punch paws greeted me. Once I'd returned to feline shape, Yuyeon quickly swept away the stray hairs and clothes left behind by my human state.
Leaving her bustling around the living room, I slowly looked up at the cat tower. Yuyeon had splurged on it recently.
I'd resisted at first, but there was something strangely comforting about climbing to the very top, stretching out on my belly, and surveying the world from above. It felt cozier than anywhere else.
No wonder real cats fought so fiercely over the highest perch. Looking down over the entire apartment from up there brought a peculiar sense of superiority mixed with pleasant drowsiness.
Maybe I'd lived in a cat's body long enough to fully embrace the instinct.
Ding-dong—
A clear chime rang through the apartment. I-sol had arrived.
Yuyeon hurried to the door. But today's visitor wasn't empty-handed.
"Huh?"
Yuyeon's eyes widened at the sight of what I-sol carried. In her large hands was a cat carrier.
That's right. I-sol had brought her own cat from home.
"Hello, Yuyeon-ssi."
I-sol greeted her with a bright smile.
"Come on in, I-sol-ssi. But the carrier...?"
"Yes. I brought our Yumi! I was hoping she and Nabi would get along."
At I-sol's cheerful words, Yuyeon couldn't hide her unease.
"What if they fight because they're strangers?"
"It's fine~ Our Yumi is super gentle and polite. Nabi's a smart, docile cat too. They definitely won't fight."
Yuyeon's worried gaze drifted up to me atop the cat tower. I met her eyes steadily, as if to say "trust me," and gave a slow nod. There was no reason for me to fight that tiny cat. On the outside I looked like one, but inside I was still a full human.
If I'd been a wild cat ruled by territorial instincts, I would've bristled and refused to forgive an intruder. But the current me didn't care about such things.
I wasn't some lowly cat obsessed with territory. What reason did I—a being who retained human intelligence and mind—have to brawl and shed fur with a real cat that only meowed?
I was a cat capable of embracing everything!
Seeing my triumphant nod from the tower, Yuyeon finally relaxed.
Her deep trust in me, and her belief in my intelligence as a beast-human, made the reassurance possible.
"Come on, Yumi. Come out~"
I-sol knelt and opened the carrier door.
"Meow~"
A cute cat slipped out. Yumi was a Korean Shorthair—the everyday mixed-breed kind.
Cheese-colored and utterly adorable.
"Meow."
Seeing another cat just like me felt strangely unsettling. This was the first time I'd encountered one since my transformation.
When I'd been human, I'd met and petted plenty of cats, but never once as a beast-human.
Maybe that was why I climbed down from the tower. Proper introductions were in order.
But something felt off... Yumi's meows sounded to me as if they'd been translated into human speech.
"Ae-ong..."
[Are you Nabi?]
This was impossible! It seemed I possessed the ability to understand cat language. Was it because I was a beast-human...? Well, if a normal person could turn into a cat, gaining the power to comprehend feline speech wasn't that far-fetched.
I answered her.
[Yeah, I'm Nabi.]
Cat language apparently had no honorifics. Even when I tried to sound polite, casual speech slipped out.
"Ae-ongse...!"
Yumi suddenly bristled, fur standing on end, and glared at me. Then she spoke in a sharp voice.
[So you're the fox-like bitch who seduced my butler I-sol!!!]
"Ae-ong?"
[What?]
I tilted my head in confusion, but Yumi charged straight at me.
[I-sol is my butler!]
"Nyaaaaak!"
"Nyaaak!"
I had no choice but to engage in an unexpected catfight. Fur flew as Yumi lashed out with extended claws.
"Oh my!!! Oh my!!! Yumi, what's wrong with you!"
"Nabiiii!"
Yuyeon and I-sol, watching in shock, raised their voices in alarm at the sudden brawl.