The Mysterious Beast Transformation
"Nabi...! You did so amazingly well, our Nabi!"
I felt Yuyeon's warm, soft hands gently stroking over my head and down the length of my back as I nestled quietly in her arms. A cozy drowsiness settled over me, the kind that made a purr threaten to rise on its own.
"Thanks to our Nabi, we got a free hundred thousand won! And I didn't end up in that terrifying prison either!"
Yuyeon beamed as she rubbed her cheek against mine. It had been a close call—she had nearly played clueless voice phishing courier, ending up behind iron bars eating tear-soaked prison rice and actually serving time.
Of course, Yuyeon's parents would have pulled strings behind the scenes to keep her out of a real cell... but even so, you couldn't just torch ten million won in settlement money just so your kid could pocket a measly two hundred thousand in part-time wages for the future, right?
Yaaawn...!
I stretched out a long, lazy yawn and quietly shut my eyes. Earlier I had burned through far too much stamina racing around downtown with Yuyeon in that frantic game of tag.
All the strength drained from my body, and I was just about to drift off when a single magical phrase slipped from Yuyeon's lips. My cat ears shot straight up, and I had no choice but to snap awake.
"We made a nice little pile of cash thanks to our Nabi... so how about I buy you a delicious Churu?"
Churu!
Those two lethal syllables made my half-closed eyes fly open. It was a word I had known perfectly well even before becoming a cat.
After all, back in my human days I had been a hardcore cat lover who binge-watched thousands of cat YouTube videos while lying in bed. I had seen with my own eyes just how completely insane cats went over Churu treats.
Maybe that was why, wearing a cat's body now, I simply could not stay still after hearing Yuyeon's sweet offer. I raised my voice at once.
"Meow meow!"
"Haha, okay okay, I got it, Nabi. I'll buy one for you right this second~ We made money thanks to our Nabi, and on a day when you did something this adorable, what kind of butler would I be if I didn't get you something nice!"
"Mreow."
Actually, I had tasted Churu once before, when Yuyeon had teasingly given me a sample... and the flavor had been a whole new world beyond anything I had imagined. One lick and it felt like my brain was tingling into paralysis—an intensely addictive delicacy, you could say. It filled my whole mouth with a savory depth on a completely different level from the dry kibble I ate every day.
As an appetite-whetting snack, nothing came close. It was like someone had taken every gourmet dish I had loved most in my human days, mixed them in the perfect sweet-and-salty ratio, and compressed them into pure essence.
In fact, even as a human, curiosity had gotten the better of me once and I had squeezed out a little Churu to try. I had been dying to know what could possibly taste so good that the cats in YouTube videos flipped out with their eyes rolling back.
Of course, through a human tongue that Churu had just tasted like some bland, fishy, greasy, unpleasantly salty mystery mud. But once I had transformed into a perfect cat shell, the taste changed completely. It was as if every taste bud woke up at the cellular level and started dancing—truly a heavenly, fantastical flavor.
"Come on, our Nabi, let's go get some Churu~"
Yuyeon hummed a cheerful little tune and headed toward a nearby pet supply store. The moment we stepped inside, walls packed with colorful Churu pouches filled my entire field of vision. I swallowed hard, eyes sparkling.
If I could just stuff myself full of that melt-in-your-mouth delicious Churu every single day... hell, I would gladly sell even a cat's soul to the devil!
"I'll get this one and this one... and that one and this one too."
"Mreow!"
I smiled at the Churu Yuyeon was buying for me.
But catching a voice phishing scam did not exactly change our daily life. Yuyeon was still completely absorbed in her computer games, practically getting sucked into the monitor, the loud racket of her furiously clicking the mouse filling the room.
Watching the flashy graphics on the screen, I knew perfectly well how fun games could be. After all, back in my carefree student days I had been a gamer who stayed up all night playing. But once you grew up, became an adult, tasted society's bitter side, and started earning your own living, you naturally understood why working adults could not game as much as they used to.
You would drag yourself home completely wiped out after a full day of human relationships and work at the company—there was no way you would have energy left to pound a keyboard and stare at a screen! The leftover stamina was only enough to collapse onto the bed and watch YouTube, that was it.
Sure, god-tier easy jobs existed somewhere in the world, but sadly every workplace I had held in my past life had come with mandatory overtime as a standard option.
"Meow..."
I had given up on the loaf position by now. I just sprawled on my back on the blanket, paws stretched out in every direction.
Before becoming a cat I had not known—tucking your front paws into your chest for that bread-loaf pose actually made your joints ache a bit and oddly drained a lot of stamina. It was a tiring posture. If you really wanted to be completely comfortable without a single thought, you had to throw dignity to the dogs and go full belly-up, exposing your soft underbelly to the sky. That flopped-out pose was the best.
"Ah!"
Watching Yuyeon's game screen felt a lot like watching a game stream. I wondered if it would be better if Yuyeon just went and started streaming games herself. If she was going to do this anyway, maybe she should debut properly as an internet game streamer. Her looks were pretty enough to rival an idol—way too good to waste rotting in a corner of the room—and her unfiltered, mumbling banter was pretty sharp in its own way.
Of course, the important part—her actual game skill—was garbage... but there were plenty of streamers who sucked at games. As long as it was fun, that was all that mattered. No matter how good you were at games, if you were born boring you would never make it big as a streamer. Unless you were the kind of person who looked like a god had descended to play—someone ranked in the world top ten, that kind of skill.
But even while having those idle thoughts, my body had been feeling a little off since yesterday. A bit dizzy, like I was getting vertigo. I did not know what vertigo even meant for a cat... but the fact that I was in bad shape was real. Maybe it was the aftereffects from the last voice phishing bust, when I had gone completely crazy running around downtown on those short little cat legs.
"Myaa..."
My joints ached all over like I had caught a nasty cold, and a hot fever burned under my skin. My head throbbed and pounded. Still, I bit my lip hard, determined never to show this intense pain outwardly. I knew better than anyone that Yuyeon's wallet had zero spare cash for a trip to the vet.
Even human hospitals covered by medical insurance left office workers trembling at the bill after one visit—so how terrifying would the charges be at an animal hospital with zero national insurance benefits? I could not even imagine. I had heard that just getting an X-ray and a simple stethoscope checkup could burn through hundreds of thousands of won in an instant.
For Yuyeon, currently unemployed with zero income and living as a NEET, it was obvious she could not just casually drop that kind of money. I had to endure it.
Time kept cruelly ticking by, but my condition did not improve even a little. If anything it got worse—the fever showed no sign of breaking. I just lay sprawled on the bed like a corpse. As the hours passed and night fell, things got seriously bad. Even the oblivious Yuyeon finally noticed something was wrong and threw her mouse aside.
"Nabi! What's wrong!"
Yuyeon abandoned the glow of the monitor and rushed over to scoop me up.
"Mreow..."
Against my will, hot tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, and yellow snot dripped from my nose. My whole body burned like a fireball. Seeing my trembling, wretched state right in front of her, Yuyeon's face went white; she stomped her feet and teared up.
"What do I do, our Nabi...! The animal hospitals are all closed right now...!"
Even human emergency rooms sometimes could not open for lack of doctors—there was no way a twenty-four-hour animal hospital would exist. Of course, if you looked hard enough maybe one did... but I did not want Yuyeon wasting money.
I deliberately slipped away from her gentle hands and, gathering the last of my strength, crawled into the deepest, darkest crevice under the bed. Being here somehow made me feel safer.
"Nabi...! Look at me, do we not need to go to the hospital? Are you really okay? Huh?!"
"Meow."
I shook my head firmly.
Hospital? Absolutely not.
And so, the next day.
I had become a beast-person.