The Tail Cover and Dad's Shocking Return
I endured that discomfort for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, even my little sister Hyeonseo—who had been out playing—came home and got to see me in this ridiculous state.
“Pfft, what the heck?”
“Shut up.”
The moment she saw me, my sister burst out laughing. The words “shut up” flew out of my mouth on reflex. It was easier than giving her some long, boring, technical explanation. After snapping at her, I immediately stood up from my seat. It wasn’t just because I didn’t want to be in the same room as her; the hour was getting late, and I had something I needed to ask Mom.
Dad would be coming home from work soon. I walked over to Mom, who was running her sewing machine in the living room like always, and asked, “Mom, how are you going to explain this to Dad?”
“Hmm?”
The noisy whir of the sewing machine came to a stop.
“Your dad? I’ll just tell him. What else is there to do?”
Even though my question had been laced with worry, Mom answered as if I’d asked something completely ordinary, her expression unchanging.
“Just tell him….”
I was grimacing at how casually she was taking this when she spoke again.
“More importantly, come over here and try this on for a second.”
Mom, who had been working on something at the sewing machine for a while, stood up as she said it. What did she want me to try on now?
“Uh…? What is it?”
Half worried and half curious, I walked over to her. In her hands was the thing she’d just been sewing. It looked like a cone-shaped piece of fabric, almost like a hat. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you wear it on your head rather than put it on? I had no idea why she’d suddenly made a hat, but I obediently pulled it over my head anyway.
“No, not there… not on your head.”
“Huh?”
Looking frustrated with me, Mom closed the distance in one step, snatched the fabric away, and promptly slipped it over my fluffy tail instead. That was when a short flash of understanding hit me. Oh. So this is a tail cover.
A custom fabric sleeve designed to cover a transformed tail and prevent shedding around the house.
“How is it? Not too uncomfortable?”
“It’s better than the plastic bag, I guess….”
When Mom asked if it was uncomfortable, I trailed off, saying it was better than the plastic. It really was an improvement over the crinkly bag, but the tail cover still looked like it would slip off helplessly during normal daily activities. I gave my tail a few big experimental swishes, and sure enough, the cover slid right off with a plastic-like rustle.
The flaw was obvious at a glance.
“I’ll have to add an elastic band at the opening,” Mom said. She picked up the fallen cover from the floor and immediately started working on a solution. It looked like she was going to make a proper one to go over my head too. Wait… did that mean I had to wear a hat around the house from now on?
This is going to be such a pain….
Still, I didn’t voice my complaint out loud. I could already imagine what Mom would say if I did. If you don’t want to clean up your own fur, then deal with it. There was no way I—who couldn’t even keep my own desk tidy—was going to start cleaning the floors. I kept my mouth shut and was about to head to the bathroom when—
Ding-dong. Beep beep beep beep.
The familiar sound of the door lock came from outside the front entrance. Then came the successful chime—beep-beep-beep. Before I could even take a breath, I came face to face with Dad.
“Ah….”
It was as if time had frozen. Both of us stood rooted to our spots, completely still. The scene was almost violent in its awkwardness—like a burglar caught red-handed in an empty house, staring down the owner.
Dad’s face naturally read, Who is this girl I’ve never seen before, standing in my house at this hour? The silence stretched on, heavy and uncomfortable, until Mom finally came out from the living room.
“You’re home? If you’re back, go wash up quickly.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
Dad gave an awkward reply to Mom’s usual prompting, but his eyes kept darting toward me, clearly bothered.
“But… who is this girl…?”
“It’s Hyunwoo. Hyunwoo. Apparently he caught some kind of disease.”
When Dad finally couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer and asked, Mom answered in a flat tone, as if explaining was too much trouble.
“Whaaaaat?!”
Of course Dad’s eyes flew wide open. He let out a startled shout at the sight of his son who had turned into a daughter overnight. He blinked rapidly, looking back and forth between me and Mom.
“That’s what happened, so just accept it.”
“No, give me a proper explanation…”
Even as Mom stubbornly kept her explanation vague, Dad—still looking unconvinced—started unbuttoning his shirt collar with a troubled expression, demanding more details. This was my cue to step in.
I showed Dad news articles about Idiopathic Therianthropic Syndrome—commonly known as Beast Disease—along with several real photos of people who had contracted it. Even then, he still seemed to have trouble believing it. His behavior toward me grew a little cautious and awkward.
“…Is this for real? This isn’t some hidden camera prank, right?”
“What would I gain by tricking you?”
When he asked Mom, who was sitting at the dining table, if this was really not a prank, she coldly brought him back to reality by asking what possible reason she would have to lie. Dad seemed to accept it after that and didn’t ask any more questions.
“Does it get better?”
“We’ve scheduled some tests at a university hospital for now.”
The conversation returned to the illness. Dad asked Mom if it was curable. She recounted the day’s events and explained that we would be getting tested at the university hospital soon. I listened to my parents talk and wondered inwardly whether this was even the kind of condition that could be treated at a hospital. From what I’d seen online, there were still no recorded cases of anyone being cured.
Still, Mom wasn’t going to give up until a doctor actually said the words, “This can’t be treated.” We’d probably have to visit several more hospitals.
“By the way, why does the kid have a plastic bag on her head?”
“Ah, because her fur sheds everywhere.”
“Fur?”
At Dad’s single-word question, there was a soft rustle. The sound of plastic crinkling echoed briefly. It had come from the plastic wrapped around my tail, which was swishing on its own without any input from me.
“Ah… so the fur sheds.”
As if reacting to the sound, Dad’s gaze shifted to my tail, and he seemed to reach his own conclusion, rendering his earlier question meaningless.
“It’s not contagious, right? Hyeonseo’s okay?”
“Hyeonseo’s perfectly fine.”
Apparently worried about his daughter, Dad asked if it was contagious and craned his neck toward our room. But once Mom assured him that Hyeonseo was unaffected, he finally looked relieved and headed off toward the bedroom.
I had always been the sickly one in the family. Atopic dermatitis, mumps, the flu, sinusitis, rhinitis—you name it. In contrast, Hyeonseo had barely ever needed to go to the hospital except for her baby shots. People even used to joke that I must have given all my health to my little sister before I was born.
“We’ve ended up with two daughters… ha, wow.”
“Hyunwoo, you can shower by yourself, right?”
Following Dad’s astounded sigh as he disappeared into the room, Mom asked if I could manage washing on my own.
“Huh? Uh… I think so.”
“If you’re not sure about anything, ask Hyeonseo or me.”
I hesitated for a second, tilting my head, before answering. Mom told me to ask if I had any questions. I’d ask her, sure—but there was no way I was asking that girl. I’d rather slam my head into the ground and figure it out myself.
And just like that, my unbelievable transformation was accepted by the whole family in the most casual way possible. Were they all really thinking of this as something that would just get better?
With a heavy heart, I grabbed a change of clothes and headed into the bathroom for a shower. As I peeled off each layer, the cold air brushed against my skin. The body reflected in the mirror was laid completely bare.
Objectively speaking, it was an incredibly attractive figure. It had nice volume in all the right places, like the ideal fox-eared girl you’d see in a manga. And yet… for some reason, I felt absolutely nothing.
Was it because I had already accepted that this was my body? Or was it that my emotions simply couldn’t keep up with the situation? I couldn’t quite tell which it was. I just stared into the mirror, carefully examining my ears and tail in turn.
Only now could I really look at the appearance I’d been too confused to study properly that morning. The triangular ears that seemed to sit somewhere between a wolf and a cat. The distinctive white tip at the end of my tail. I didn’t know much about animals, but these features were clear enough to narrow it down.
I guess… it has to be a fox, right?
With that vague guess, I turned away from the mirror.
In the end, what kind of animal I was didn’t really matter.
Sigh. Let’s just wash up and get it over with.
They say even if you wring a chicken’s neck, morning will still come. Even if I’d turned into a beast-person, I still had to go to school tomorrow. Instead of getting lost in useless thoughts, the best thing to do was wash quickly and go to bed. With that in mind, I turned the faucet to the usual forty-five-degree angle for warm water and pulled it up, just like always.
Whoosh. A powerful stream of water poured out of the showerhead.
“…Eek?!”
I jumped in shock at the forceful spray and instinctively kicked off the floor, stumbling backward.
Why… why did I react like that?
Even after doing it, I was stunned at my own reaction. Of course lifting the lever makes water come out. That was obvious. Yet my body had moved on its own. My usually limp, soft tail fur was now standing on end.
The showerhead continued to blast water. To wash, I obviously had to get my body wet. So why did something so normal feel so repulsive today?
“Ugh… uuu…”
Even while grimacing in disgust, I slowly brought the showerhead closer to my body and forced the water onto my skin.
“Hiiik?!”
The moment the water touched me, a violent wave of rejection surged through my body. I let out a strange noise and shuddered. It felt like my instincts were screaming that this was wrong.
And so, my battle against myself began in the bathroom.