Unexpected Fortune
I worked my four absurdly short, fluffy legs as hard as they would go.
I had to pick up the pace. Fast. I needed to resolve this completely insane situation and find a real human being who could actually help me.
Even if I screamed at Yuyeon, who was chasing me right this second, the only thing that would sadly come tumbling out of my throat was a delicate little cat meow.
"Meow meow!"
"Nooooo! My money envelope!"
Behind me, Yuyeon's shrieks of pure despair waxed and waned as the distance between us stretched and shrank.
Of course, I wasn't trying to ditch her completely or vanish somewhere she could never find me. If I disappeared without a plan, I—a cat—would swallow the money envelope whole, while Yuyeon, the one who'd actually taken possession of it, would be left holding the bag for the heavy crime of aiding and abetting an illegal scheme.
So I ran with cold, calculated precision, maintaining just enough of a maddening gap that Yuyeon's fingertips kept brushing empty air no matter how desperately she lunged.
"Ahh! Kitty, please stop!"
"Mrow!"
"Wait… why does the way that cat runs look exactly like our Nabi…!"
"Meow…"
I casually skidded to a halt in the middle of the street and stared back at her with the serene air of a cheerleader rooting from the sidelines. It was a deliberate strategy—constant visual bait so she wouldn't give up the chase and collapse in a heap.
I dragged Yuyeon on a frantic tour of every alley and side street until, at last, a ray of salvation caught my feline eye.
A patrol car, parked in the shadowy corner of an alley with impeccable timing.
Under any other circumstances, catching cops slacking off in a back alley like this would have earned them a scathing mental lecture about dereliction of duty. But in this particular moment, I had never been happier to see the long arm of the law.
"Meow!"
I launched myself without hesitation. Drawing on a cat's ridiculous spring and leaping power, I sliced lightly through the air and landed soft as a feather on the hood of the brand-new patrol car.
Just as expected, two officers sat inside with their seatbacks reclined, completely absorbed in their smartphones.
"Meow meow!"
I put every ounce of strength into my adorable little front paws and hammered on the windshield with a noisy barrage of Cat Punches.
Startled by the sudden racket, the officers inside snapped their heads up, then climbed out looking thoroughly bewildered.
"What kind of cat has zero fear like this?"
"Hey, Senior! Look at that. The cat's got something in its mouth. Looks like an envelope?"
"Mrow."
I seized the moment, spat out the heavy money envelope with a decisive ptew, and dropped it right in front of my paws.
"What the hell is this?"
The older-looking senior officer picked up the envelope I'd delivered and peered inside with open suspicion.
The flap fell open, revealing a dense stack of yellow fifty-thousand-won bills featuring Lady Shin Saimdang.
"What? Why is a cat carrying a money envelope?"
While the officers stood there stammering in confusion, Yuyeon rounded the corner of the alley at the perfect moment, gasping and wheezing for breath.
"Ah—Police officers!"
"Mrow."
My work complete, I finally let the tension drain from my legs and hopped straight into Yuyeon's arms. She hugged me tight even as she made a half-hearted motion like she was about to give me a knuckle sandwich.
"You bad cat…! How could you run off with such an important money envelope!"
"Meowngh."
At the strange little mewl that slipped from my mouth, Yuyeon tilted her head for a second.
"Huh? That meow… it sounds exactly like our Nabi's…?"
Suspicion blooming, she finally took a close look at the tiny choker-style collar dangling from my neck. Naturally, it was clearly engraved with Yuyeon's phone number and my name: Nabi.
"Wait—Nabi?! What are you doing out here? When did you even escape the house!?"
Yuyeon's eyes went so wide they looked ready to pop right out of her skull as she shrieked.
"Meowngh!"
I simply gazed up at her with a pitiful, clueless expression and meowed. Even if I'd wanted to speak human words, all that came out were cat sounds. Nothing I could do about it.
But the situation was already rolling exactly the way I'd planned—because an officer who grasped the gravity of things was now walking toward Yuyeon.
"Excuse me… young lady, are you this cat's guardian?"
"Ah, yes… this is our cat, but…"
"More importantly—where on earth did this money envelope come from?"
The officer pressed the question with sharp, common-sense suspicion as he checked the contents again.
A full two hundred crisp fifty-thousand-won bills. Ten million won in total. At a glance, there was no way a girl who looked like an ordinary high-schooler or fresh graduate would be wandering around with a cash bundle that enormous.
Fortunately, Yuyeon didn't invent some flimsy lie. Looking thoroughly frightened, she spilled the whole truth.
"I… I got instructions from an online site where you look for part-time jobs…"
She explained how she'd been told to photograph a designated location, take various other pictures, received this money envelope from the victim, and then been ordered to shove it deep into the space beneath an air-conditioner outdoor unit at a specified building.
By this point, even the dullest rookie officer would have caught on instantly. It was a textbook Voice Phishing Courier part-time job scam.
"They said someone would come pick it up soon…"
Yuyeon muttered to the end with that pure, clueless brain of hers, still not fully grasping the situation.
But the officers, veterans of every mess imaginable, didn't stop there. They exchanged a look, and both their faces hardened with grim purpose.
"Then let's go right now to that outdoor unit where you were told to leave the envelope."
The two officers headed with Yuyeon back to the outdoor unit where the money envelope had been placed earlier.
"Just a moment, Miss Yuyeon. Just in case…"
As a precaution, the veteran officer carefully removed the real ten million won in cash from the envelope and secured it, then stuffed the empty shell with newspaper and pamphlets until it looked full again. He slid the fake, padded envelope deep into the gap beneath the outdoor unit exactly as instructed.
"Ah…!"
Yuyeon let out a short gasp, and the officer quickly pressed her shoulder, pulling them both into the shadows behind the alley wall across from the unit.
Barely breathing, the officer quietly explained to Yuyeon, point by point, how voice phishing rings operated and how she had been used. Only then did the color drain completely from her face. She finally understood the truth—that she had come within a hair's breadth of becoming a criminal organization's hands and feet in a fraud scheme.
"I—I'm so sorry! I really had no idea…!"
Looking at Yuyeon, who seemed ready to burst into tears at any second, the officer gently shook his head and patted her shoulder.
"It's all right. You didn't have bad intentions, and more importantly, the money never actually reached those voice phishing bastards. The timing worked out perfectly."
Not long after the officer finished comforting her, a highly suspicious figure appeared at the far end of the alley—face hidden under a low-pulled hat and a mask.
The man scanned his surroundings with extreme caution, stared hard at his smartphone screen, then walked straight to the outdoor unit as if drawn by a magnet.
Then, as casually as if he were simply retrieving his own property, he shoved his hand deep into the narrow gap beneath the unit. The moment his fingers found the envelope, his eyes flashed.
With practiced ease he snatched it up, tucked it into his jacket, and started to leave the alley at a quick clip without so much as a backward glance.
In that exact instant, the two hidden officers exploded out like lightning, twisted both of the culprit's arms behind his back, and slammed him face-first onto the asphalt!
"Don't move! Police!"
A short scream rang through the midday alley, followed by the crisp, satisfying click of handcuffs snapping shut.
Thanks to the sudden starring performance of Yuyeon—and me, wearing a cat's skin—we had thoroughly dumped a whole jar of hot chili powder all over a collection route belonging to one of the voice phishing rings rotting the Republic of Korea from the inside.
"Aaaagh! What the hell is this! Let—let me go!"
The culprit was hauled off to the patrol car still screaming, wrists cuffed. Unlike Yuyeon, this guy really was an organization member.
Once the man had been loaded into a second police car that arrived with sirens blaring for backup, a brief silence settled over the alley. Yuyeon's legs were still trembling with released tension when the veteran officer standing beside her spoke in a heavy voice.
"Young lady, the original owner of this money—the victim—is on her way here… so let's get our stories straight."
Patting Yuyeon's shoulder, the officer carefully laid out the rough concept.
In short: Yuyeon, who had personally received the money envelope from the victim, had sensed something was off, and—burning with a sense of justice—had immediately reported it to the police and helped with the stakeout.
I understood perfectly why the officer was going this far to cover for her.
He was worried that once the victim learned the full story, she might decide Yuyeon was in cahoots with the scammers and pour out resentment or worse. Even if Yuyeon had been deceived into participating, from the victim's point of view the person who actually collected the money still looked like a clear perpetrator.
They had barely finished aligning on the story and catching their breath when the victim came into view in the distance, rushing toward them in a flustered hurry.
She was an elderly woman with deeply wrinkled skin.
To the grandmother whose face had gone paper-white at the thought of losing what might have been a lifetime's savings, the officer calmly explained the rough situation and then returned every last crisp fifty-thousand-won bill he had been safekeeping.
"Aigoo, my money…! My money…!"
Clutching her chest and weeping, the old woman then did something none of us—the police, Yuyeon, or me nestled in her arms—saw coming.
"Aigoo! I'm so grateful I don't know what to do… Ah! Young lady, it's not much, but please take this!"
She pulled out two crumpled fifty-thousand-won bills—a hundred thousand won in total—and forcibly pressed them into Yuyeon's hand.
The victim could have lost ten million won, and Yuyeon had stopped it from happening. Legally speaking, anyone who returned lost property also had the right to claim a reasonable finder's reward.
Of course Yuyeon, who knew nothing about legal rights and was still drowning in guilt over her own mistake, waved her hands frantically in refusal.
"Ah, no, Grandma! I really didn't do anything! I can't take this!"
"Please take it, dear. I'm just so grateful."
Under the grandmother's pleading, Yuyeon accepted the hundred thousand won.
I watched the whole thing and smiled to myself.
Crime solved, and money earned on top of it!
Talk about having your cake and eating it too—catching the crayfish while clearing the ditch. A perfect two-birds-with-one-stone ending if there ever was one!