“Who are you?”

“I’m a cat.”

Nayeon snorted at the easy response. In retrospect, Nayeon thought she deserved a ing medal at just how well she was taking things considering the woman across from her at her dining table was literally her cat not even an hour ago. Managing to get the woman to stop pawing at the bacon strewn about on her kitchen floor and aggressively stripping off her own hoodie to toss it in the woman’s face, they were finally face to face at the table, the woman firmly holding onto the plate that held the scrambled eggs previously. Nayeon watched her guest the plate clean.

“What are you, then?” Nayeon tried again.

“I’m a cat,” The woman brought a clenched fist to her cheek. “Mrreow.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t think you know what that means,” Nayeon retorted, her eyes narrowing at the woman acting cute with her makeshift paw fists pressed to her face. The woman only shrugged. Sighing, Nayeon messed up her hair in exasperation, rubbing down her already tired face. It was only 9 am.

“Okay. Let’s try another question. How do you know how to speak?” Nayeon asked. The woman had since set the pristine plate down in front of her to play with the hoodie straps. However, at Nayeon’s question, she looked up to eye Nayeon as if she was dumb.

“Um, excuse me, how do you?” She quipped.

Affronted, Nayeon spat back, “I’m a human, I’m supposed to speak!”

The woman let her eyes roll like two marbles on speed as she argued, “Are you saying that there aren’t any humans who don’t speak?”

 “Yes! I mean, no! … Well there can be- Oh my god,” Nayeon sputtered. “Are you saying that all cats speak, they just choose not to??”

The woman once again shrugged and ducked her head to fiddle with the hoodie straps again. “I don’t know, I’m just a cat. Stop asking me.”

Nayeon’s jaws slackened as she incredulously eyed the woman who was obviously not a cat- at least not at the moment. Her eyes unconsciously traveled down to the legs peeking from the waist hems of her hoodie. The woman’s legs were white, long, strong, with the contours of the slight knobby knees casting sharp shadows. Nayeon gulped down the collection of saliva underneath her tongue before she could fully comprehend what she was doing.

“Hey,” The woman called, and Nayeon snapped her gaze back to the woman’s knowing eye smile.

Well .

Nayeon did the first thing that came to mind and literally slapped herself, hard. This wasn’t a dream, and her face stung like a .

“You’re weird,” The woman’s high pitched lilting voice filled her ringing head. “And I wasn’t kidding, I really want cheese kimbap.”

-

The next weekend, Mina had invited Nayeon out to walk her new puppy at a nearby trail overlooking the Han River. Nayeon had said yes to the offer even before Mina had finished her sentence, which surprised Mina as Nayeon hated exercising in any form aside from the finger exercises she did to press the buttons of her remote control (‘I also do breathing exercises, mmhmm, hard work,’). But if there was one thing that Nayeon hated more than exercising was that infernal cat lady who is still obviously not a cat, eating her food and sleeping in her bed without a single sign of gratitude. She definitely preferred the cat version of her.

Even worse, she kept sauntering around the apartment as if she owned the place, completely . She figured that that’s what she was doing already before as a cat, but that didn’t excuse the woman of the fact that she kept shedding her coveted ex-girlfriend’s oversized hockey jersey (which she said was the only material she felt she could breathe in) all over the place. Nayeon was almost getting suspicious of the woman’s supposed feline identity; she was convinced that the woman was actually a snake that had to regularly shed its god damn skin in form of various articles of clothing.

The woman had asked one day, during dinner when Nayeon was showing her how to wield the chopsticks, to give her a name.

“A name?” Nayeon repeated, helping the woman to bend her fingers in a certain way to grasp the chopsticks.

“Mm. A pretty one,” Her soft voice dipped, tinged with a note of shyness.

“When you learn to stop shedding my clothes everywhere like they’re skin, maybe I’ll think about it you snake,” Nayeon bantered, her eyes unconsciously making its way down the length of the woman’s body hidden by a single long hoodie. The woman clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“Your human clothes make me want to throw up hairballs,”

Nayeon snapped her head up and stared in desperate panic. “Oh balls, please don’t,” It was a process to teach her how to the use the bathroom after a tiny ‘incident’ involving liquids she would rather not revisit in her mind ever again, and she really didn’t want to deal with hairballs the size of a human esophagus on top of that as well. The woman pouted and shimmied her shoulders, whining.

“A naaaaame.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll think about it. You should too.”

In any way, Nayeon needed a break from the entitled and haughty woman who was just, constantly there, in her home, and she gladly took the opportunity to jog with Mina along the paved path by the river. Although, the thought didn’t last long as they jogged for the entirety of 8 minutes and Nayeon keeled over, wheezing, with Mina looking down at her pathetic form with judgemental eyes. Mina’s Shiba pup excitedly lapped at Nayeon’s chin from beneath. Her mind buzzed from the shortness of breath, and strangely as it did, it wandered to the image of the woman who she left at home with an oversized t-shirt draped over her form, legs crossed, and staring up at the television screen while on a beef jerky. She had left the TV on for the woman, and advised her to watch some shows that would give her some ideas about what kind of name she would want to have.

“Okay, this is just sad,” Mina stood, her hips jutted to the side and her arms crossed. Nayeon brought up an index finger to motion for her friend to shut her Shiba loving face (Nayeon loved calling Mina that; ‘Did you just call me ssibal face?!’ – ‘Shiba, SHIBA!’). Mina only smirked.

“Throw me a freakin’ bone. We can’t all be born with godly genetics and dancer lungs,” Nayeon hacked out her words through uneven breaths, and her friend tutted.

“Anyways. I wanted to run something by you,” Mina crouched down, her hand patting the scruff of her pup. Nayeon peeked from the side of her eye, her form still hunched over with hands pushing on her thighs. “I was thinking we can just go to your place next weekend for drinks. Jihyo will still be a bit jetlagged from her trip and I thought we could just hang loose at your place.”

Nayeon frowned.

“And why not your place?” She asked, her eyes narrowing at the sight of Mina looking away and avoiding her gaze.

“Can’t,” Mina replied, gesturing towards her Shiba. “Jihyo’s allergic.”

Nayeon would’ve agreed without any trouble normally, but a flash reminder of the lady parading around her apartment shot bullets of cold sweat down her back.

“Uhh, I don’t think my place would work next weekend.”

“Why not??” Mina groaned.

“I, uhh, have a friend, um, staying over, ahh, for a bit,” Great. Awesome. Mina wouldn’t be suspicious at all with that level of acting prowess, Nayeon thought to herself sarcastically as she bit the insides of her cheeks.

“You have two friends Nayeon,” Mina coolly retorted. “One, me, two, Jihyo.”

Nayeon made a face that she knew would let Mina know that she was serious. “I’m not lying when I say I have someone staying with me right now, though. Sorry.”

Mina sighed while playing with her Shiba’s neck flabs. “Fine. We’ll stay at my place, I’ll keep the pup locked in the room.”

But then the corners of her eyes got pointed as she shot daggers towards Nayeon, who internally flinched at the piercing x-ray vision.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook Im, because I bet my damn left liver that a girl is staying with you,” Nayeon only gulped but shook her head. Mina’s eyes remained pointy as they made their way to circle the trail again. Nayeon didn’t technically lie; the girl back home wasn’t actually a girl… She was a cat.

-

When Nayeon had come back home from one of her late nights from work, she came back just in time to see her cat girl flushed with burning tips of her ears, her hands fumbling with the remote to flick the channels over in a frenzy. Nayeon could only smirk as she ped her boots and stepped inside- unfortunately for the cat, she had seen the brief flashes of shaking skin and heard the hyperualized noises from the stereo.

“Uhh, what were you watching?” She asked, feigning ignorance. The woman awkwardly cleared before replying ‘Cartoons’, with her eyes blatantly ignoring Nayeon’s following gaze. With the level of shame and guilt abashing the woman, Nayeon thought the woman might as well have watched hard core that dealt with some questionable kinks.

“Oh yeah? Cartoons? You sure? The air feels a bit muggy in here,” Nayeon teased, fanning her hands about in exaggerated motions, drinking in the adorable sight of the flustered demeanour of the woman. She then decided to plop down next to her on the couch, taking the remote to change