What the Hell Is Going On?
I remember being pretty weak when I was a kid.
A crybaby, a coward, a total pushover...
Honestly, I didn’t have many friends.
“Waaah, stop it!”
“Hey, look, he’s crying again~”
“Crybaby, crybaby~!”
So maybe it was inevitable that kids my age would bully me.
Of course, my little-kid brain couldn’t process it with that kind of calm detachment. I just cried at the unfairness of it all.
That was when it happened.
“Yaaah~~~!!”
Thud!
A cheerful shout and a painful-sounding impact reached my ears.
For a second I couldn’t make sense of anything, so I lifted my head and looked around…
The kids who had been bullying me were suddenly rolling across the ground.
“Don’t gang up on a weak kid, you cowards!”
A boy had appeared out of nowhere, shouting as he glared at the fallen children and told them to scram.
The ones who’d been picking on me flinched at his loud voice and ran off.
“Hmph! Pathetic!”
The boy who had knocked them down and saved me walked over.
Bonk!
He smacked me on the head.
“Hey, men don’t cry! Fight back!”
Was this kid going to bully me too?
I had just started to feel relieved that he’d rescued me, but now I tensed up again as I stared at him.
Then—
“Oppa… don’t get mad…”
A girl grabbed the boy’s arm.
She was… incredibly cute, even for her age. Small and delicate, yet her eyes sparkled with so much life that I couldn’t stop staring.
“Uh…”
“Huh? What? Why are you staring at my sister?”
“Eh? Ah… it’s nothing…”
“Huh? Hey, do you know her?”
My face grew hot and I turned away. The boy tilted his head, asked his sister if she knew me, and the little girl hid behind him, peeking out.
“Um… I don’t know.”
She answered carefully.
“Hmm~ Then why does he keep looking at you?”
“I don’t know either…”
“And why are you looking at my sister?”
“Ah… uh… um…”
I couldn’t give the boy any answer. Because… I didn’t know the reason myself.
My face just felt strangely warm, but as a child I had no idea what that meant.
“More importantly, why were those kids bullying you?”
“That’s… oh, right.”
His question reminded me of what had happened before the bullying started. I left the two of them, went back to where I’d been getting hit, and looked around.
“Ah, thank goodness…”
I spotted the cat beside the tree and breathed a sigh of relief.
“What? Oh, a cat?”
“…Yeah.”
I had been on my way home after running an errand when I saw kids harassing a cat at the playground. I told them to stop… and ended up getting bullied myself.
“…It’s cute.”
The boy’s sister looked at the cat with sparkling eyes and tried to approach, but—
“Hissss!”
“Eek!”
Unfortunately the cat was extremely wary of her. Or maybe it was just scared of people in general.
“Hey, don’t. It might scratch you.”
“Yeah… But oppa, that cat… looks hurt.”
“What?”
“Ah…”
Both the boy and I turned to look. Sure enough, blood was seeping from its right hind leg.
It must have been injured while those kids were messing with it.
“Tsk, what do we do…? It gets scared if you even get close.”
“Oppa…”
The girl tugged her brother’s sleeve, eyes pleading for him to do something. But he didn’t have any bright ideas either.
In the end he just scratched his head, at a loss, and the girl’s face crumpled like she was about to cry. When I saw that—
“…”
I slowly approached the cat behind the tree.
“Huh?”
“Hey… what if it bites?”
Both of them sounded panicked, but I kept moving, carefully drawing nearer to the cat.
Thinking back now… it wasn’t really about saving the cat.
“Hiss…”
It glared at me the same way it had glared at the girl. But maybe it was my imagination; it somehow seemed less guarded than before.
Honestly, coming this close was already an act of courage… Did I really need to get any nearer?
“…Huu.”
When I turned my head, I realized the girl was watching me with a worried expression.
She was looking at me.
…
“…Gulp.”
I didn’t know the name of the feeling back then. I only knew, instinctively, that I had to keep moving forward.
I drew closer to the cat, and soon—
“Meow…”
“Got you.”
I finally reached the cat lying behind the tree. Strangely, it didn’t resist when I picked it up. Instead it nestled against me, as if trusting me with its whole body.
“Whoa…”
When I carried it back to the boy and girl, the boy’s surprised voice rang out. He walked over and patted my back.
“What the—you’re really brave!”
“H-hey, stop. The cat might fall.”
“Ah, sorry. Anyway… huh, the leg isn’t that badly hurt.”
“You’re right…”
Up close, the leg was bleeding but it didn’t look serious. Just a scratch. It would probably heal on its own.
“…”
Feeling both relieved and a little foolish, my eyes met the girl’s. She was staring at me in a daze.
Our gazes locked without either of us meaning for it to happen.
“Hu.”
“Uu…”
We both looked away at the same time.
Why was this happening… My face felt hot. And why had I turned away just now…?
“What’s with you two? Both of you are blushing.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“…I don’t know either.”
“Huh?”
While we were all caught up in that strange new feeling we’d never experienced before, the cat in my arms let out a soft cry.
“Meeow~”
It sounded more like a yawn. After it finished yawning, the cat slowly closed its eyes.
“Meow…”
It fell asleep right there, body relaxed against mine.
“Huh?”
“…Must’ve been tired.”
“Yeah… Whew.”
The tension we’d all been holding finally melted away. Now we could really look at one another.
“Hey, did you know it wouldn’t bite you?”
“No… Honestly I thought it would.”
“Then why’d you go? You like cats that much?”
“…”
At the boy’s question I unconsciously glanced at the girl. When I suddenly looked at her, she tilted her head.
“…I don’t know.”
“Hmm~”
I quickly averted my eyes again and felt my face grow hot once more. Luckily neither of them pressed the issue.
But the conversation died, leaving an awkward silence. The girl was the one who broke it.
“…What’s your name?”
“Huh? The cat’s?”
“No…”
When I asked, thinking she meant the cat, she shook her head. Then she pointed straight at me.
“Your name… what is it?”
“Oh, right. I haven’t told you my name yet. It’s Riha. Lee Riha.”
“Riha? That’s a weird name, isn’t it?”
The boy made a strange face when he heard it, but his sister—
“Yeah, it sounds like a good name.”
—said that.
…That was probably the first day I ever felt any real attachment to my own name.
“What about you two?”
“Us? I’m An Daeho. This is my little sister, An Aju.”
“…”
The girl named An Aju gave a small bow beside her brother who had just introduced himself. Then she looked at me and said,
“Riha oppa…”
For some reason my heart pounded like crazy. I still remember it.
Wait, more than that… her voice just now sounded way too real. What? Why “real”? What the hell is going on…?
What the hell is going on…?
“Riha oppa. Wake up.”
“…Huh?”
A gentle voice pulled me from what felt like a nostalgic dream. I forced my eyes open, and there in front of me was—
“…Are you awake now?”
“Aju.”
She looked a little bigger than the version of her in my dream. She still had short hair, but one side had been allowed to grow out longer…
The nineteen-year-old Aju.
“Sorry, I overslept.”
“It’s okay. You stayed up late last night, didn’t you?”
“Still, making a student who’s preparing for exams wake me up feels a bit…”
“Hehe, it’s fine. I do it because I like doing it. Oh, breakfast is ready. Let’s eat together.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll go set the table first.”
With a cute smile, Aju left the room. I watched her retreating back and compared it to the younger Aju I had just seen in my dream.
She was more energetic than before, and although she was still small compared to me, she had definitely grown.
It had already been a month since I started living with her.
“To put it bluntly, it’s been a month since that bastard Daeho died. Time really flies.”
The boy from the dream—An Daeho. My best friend and Aju’s older brother… had died from overwork a month ago.
Seriously.
“Leaving a sister like that behind and dying? What an idiot. Nothing but pathetic.”
“All talk and no height, that scrawny little punk. And then he goes and dies alone, leaving a sister like her.”
“Sigh, so he dies a virgin incel—”
Thud!
While I was busy insulting my dead friend, something hit me from the side. The impact was too small and soft to come from a person.
“Ow… What, you were awake?”
“You’re not dead.”
“Is there really a connection between those two things…”
Even though I was hearing the voice of a friend who should have been dead—a situation that should have been terrifying—I didn’t feel scared at all. I just looked utterly dumbfounded as I stared at the source of the angry voice.
A cat.
“Don’t people usually move on to the afterlife when they die? How do you end up possessing a cat?”
That’s right. My friend An Daeho had died.
But somehow, the guy was now inside the cat I had been raising.
Seriously, what the hell is going on…?