There's something about living in isolation that makes a person ten times more paranoid.

Eunji eyed the cornfields warily. There was no wind today, so there was no reason for anything to rustle or move. She knew there were no rats in her field; Bomi does such a good job with them. And she knew Bomi herself was safely in the house, taking her daily afternoon nap.

Eunji was alone, like it had always been for the last six months.

Her young pony neighed to get her attention. She was in the midst of grooming it before she caught something moving in the fields....or she thought she saw something move.

Eunji patted the pony's head affectionately. It could just be another fragment of her silly imagination, since if there were really something there, her colt, Sehun, protectively standing guard over them, certainly would've sensed it by now.

Instead Sehun remained calm and relaxed, munching on apples that Eunji had left for him before she moved on to tend to her pony, Hayoung.

“I'm going crazy,” Eunji mumbled to herself as she braided Hayoung's tail. She started humming a song to herself to fill in the silence.

A few minutes later, when the afternoon heat started to get unbearable, Eunji retreated back into her house. Bomi let out a startled noise when she entered and nearly stepped on her tail again.

“Ya, stupid cat! How many times did I tell you not to sleep near the door?” She fumed, heading into the kitchen to fix herself a snack.

Bomi mewled and eagerly pranced after her, hoping to get a snack herself.

“I'm not feeding you again. You just had your lunch.”

Eunji ignored the disappointed mewling from her feline companion, opting instead to focus on her task at hand. She the radio and started making herself a sandwich. She wasn't one for television, and besides the cable signal she got was awful anyways.

As she ate, she mentally ran through the list of chores she still needed to do for the day. Later in the evening she had to water the crops again, since it was especially hot today. She also had to harvest the strawberries and make them into jam, since tomorrow was a Saturday and she always goes to the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Not to mention...she peered at the kitchen sink. No pile of unwashed dishes, that's good. But there was a pile of unfolded laundry still in the living room that she had yet to start working on.

Eunji was shook out of her reverie when something jumped into her lap.

She looked down at Bomi's innocent face. The cat purred and began rubbing her whiskers against her arm, silently asking for a bite. Eunji glared, annoyed, before sighing and tearing a slice of ham of her sandwich to give to her insatiable pet. She gobbled it up quickly before hopping off and away to wherever that cats always wandered off to.

Eunji shook her head. Really, if it wasn't for Bomi's skill in rat catching, she would've sent the cat away to stay with Minki because of it's large appetite.

It was sometime between after her father had left for the military and before her mother fell terminally ill. Minki had came back from school and brought home an abandoned, newborn kitten with him. Eunji at first was adamant, trying to reason with her little brother that they already have too many animals to care for.

“But noona, we can't leave her out there all alone! She'll die!” Minki held up the little kitten. There was only a slight fuzz of fur on it, and it was a light brown coloring. Her large, vulnerable kitty eyes were a clear green, and when Eu