“There's too much salt in this,” Yugyeom scrunched his nose in distaste as he chewed slowly on the noodles. “Yeah, definitely too much salt.”

“What are you talking about?” Daejung scoffed. He took his son's aversion to his noodles as a personal affront as he scooped a ladleful of soup and noodles into his own bowl. “It's not too salty! I only added a handful.”

“It's supposed to be a pinch,” Yugyeom pressed, “no one adds a handful of salt to anything.”

“I'm sensing a handful of attitude and I-“

“We should get a cat,” Yoona blurted out as she smoothened the file on her lap under the table. Her interruption brought a ceasefire to the argument as her father and brother paused to blink owlishly at her.

“I'm sorry,” Daejung waved a hand. “Did you say we should get a cat?”

“Why?” Yugyeom looked slightly disgusted with the mere idea as he pushed his bowl aside.

“Because they're good at keeping the monsters under my bed away.”

While Yugyeom's smile broke out and Daejung shook his head in bemusement, it really wasn't a lie. Felines were excellent and inexpensive ghostbusters. Yoona's delicate façade of safety had flushed straight down the drain after last nights incident at the lake. She had no way of knowing if the ghost had followed her home, and as a result she had kept herself up at night from countless nightmares . And when she went to her window to get some fresh air, she caught sight of the ghost with a broken neck clawing at Jungkook's living room window.

She needed a new strategy that didn't involve running away and hiding from ghosts.

Eventually, they would come for her.

“I had five in Jeju she continued as she thumbed the edge of her file nervously. “But I wasn't allowed to bring with me.”

“Five?” Daejung's eyebrows arched in surprise. “Your mother let you keep them all?”

“I never asked for much,” Yoona shrugged as pangs of regret clawed at her chest. She knew she should have fought harder to keep them, but she had to think about her father and brother too. She couldn't just bring five felines into a pet-less household and expect them to be okay with it.

“How come you had so many?” Yugyeom asked her as he sipped a bit of water.

“I got two from the shelter, and the other three just short of showed up and I convinced mom to let me keep them.”

That wasn't a complete lie. It had taken multiple cans of cat food to lure the little ers in everyday until they got used to being around and had wanted to come in. Her step-father had been very much against it, but thankfully her mother was just as much of cat lover as Yoona.

By the time her parental-appointed counsellor convinced her mother that ‘cat-hoarder’ had been a symptom of Yoona's ‘issue,’ it had been too late to get rid of them.

Daejung drummed his fingernails on the table as he contemplated. “I don't know about having an animal in the house.”

“You have Yugyeom.”

'Rude,' her brother scoffed before nodding sagely, as if agreeing with her.

“But seriously,” Yoona turned her attention back to her father. “It isn't like having a dog! They don't grow to the size of a sofa, they don't tear the furniture to shreds when you leave them alone, they like to lounge around and mind their own business.”

Yugyeom propped his chin on his palm and gave his sister a nod of approval. “The sibling has many good points. She has my support.”

“Thank you! It'll be fine, I promise!” Yoona assured her father. “I'll handle all the costs with my savings account! I'll handle the food, water, kitty litter, medicine, and it can stay in my room. All you have to do is sign a single paper at the shelter which says you're the property owner and are allowed to have animals on the premises.”

Daejung did that scrunchy thing with his eyebrows as mulled over the proposition. Yoona recognised that look, it was the one appeared seconds before he would say no. She needed reinforcements.

She turned to Yugyeom. “How about it? Don't you think that getting a cat would be awesome?”

“Well,” Yugyeom looked heavenward. “I feel like snakes would be way cooler.”

“No snakes,” Daejung quickly intercepted with a warning look at the siblings.

“Yeah, why did you go for the weirdest choice?” Yoona scrunched her nose as Yugyeom shrugged sheepishly. “A bonus point is that it'll keep me company when Yugyeom leaves for football camp, seeing as I don't have any friends yet.”

Before she had moved, her entire world had consisted of Yugyeom - and Jungkook because he was always there, not exactly by choice. She had a few friends in schools, but hadn't kept contact with them in years.

Yoona clapped her hands together in a prayer position and brought them up to her forehead as she ducked her head. “Please dad, please! I haven't asked anything from you in years, and I promise you won't even know the cat's around!”

“Oh my god,” Daejung lowered his gaze down to the plate and scrubbed his at his eyes in a tired manner. “You sound just like your mother.”

Yoona lowered her hands to glance at Yugyeom, who was quick to match her own confused stare with his own.

There was always a small part of Yoona that believed that the reason she was sent away was not because it would have been easier for a mother to take care of a daughter than a son, but because Daejung couldn't stand to be around Yoona. Everyone would always tell her that she was a mirror image of her mother, and that their voices were even a perfect match.

“So,” Yoona began cautiously as Yugyeom frowned at their father. “That's a no then?”

Daejung observed her carefully, a torrent of emotions swirling beneath his exterior. When realising that this wasn't his turbulent wife that he was addressing, his frown dissolved and his expression softened.

“Only one cat,” he rumbled as he dug into his food again. “And make sure the damn thing stays out of my bedroom.”

Yoona smiled brightly as she brought the file from her lap to slam it on the table. “This contains all the info I could get about the shelter, and I tagged all the cats up for adoption. The shelter closes at five, so can we go after lunch?”

Daejung blinked owlishly at the thick file while Yugyeom laughed loudly from across the table.

“What?” She asked as innocently as possible. “I like to arrive at my battles well prepared.”

After lunch was cleared, the siblings filed out together towards the car. Yoona's eyes scanned every inch of the area even faking nothing felt off. Once they began appearing and noticing her, ghosts had a tendency to travel in packs. One might describe the experience