“And in it goes!” Sarang said as the basketball Myungsoo shot sailed swiftly through the air and swished into the basket.

“Did you see that? I didn’t even miss one single shot!” He excitedly ran over to her and put his hand up.

“Yup, and I’ve got to say that it’s all thanks to me that you’ve improved this much,” she boasted.

Myungsoo continued holding his hand in the air in front of her, waiting. “Ahem,” he said when she still didn’t do what he wanted her to do.

“What?”

“Where’s my high-five?”

“I think that a high-five is too casual for our relationship as a trainer and a trainee.”

He gave her a look. “Are you being serious?”

She held her straight face for a few seconds before breaking into a smile. “Nope.” She finally gave him a high-five and he received it excitedly.

“So does this mean that it’s over? It’s already the end of the third day, and you already assessed me on my improved soccer and basketball skills…” He had on an expectant expression. “…are we done, yet?”

“Well, considering that it’s only around 9 pm, the day is technically not over yet.”

“So we’re not done?” he said in more of a groan.

She opened to tell him that they should practice some more, when someone from afar caught her attention. Is that… She widened her eyes before finishing her thoughts. Seolhyun! And Sunwoong is next to her!

“Change of plans, we’re done,” she quickly said. Myungsoo was about to cheer, but was suddenly pulled along by his counselor. “Right now we have an emergency situation, which calls for our intrusion in someone else’s… date.”

He furrowed his eyebrows as he trailed behind her. “What are you talking about?”

She stopped and pointed towards the direction of their two fellow coworkers, who were laughing together blissfully. Myungsoo’s eyes widened at the sight of the two. “S-Seolhyun and Sunwoong… what are they doing together?”

“They’re on a date together, not sure if it’s romantic or friendly, but I am sure that we have to interrupt.”

“Like how? Are we just going to stroll in and pretend that we coincidentally saw them and want to join?”

“Exactly. We’re doing exactly that.”

He was caught off guard for a moment, but was once again pulled by her before he could even make a single protest.

“Oh, Seolhyun!” Sarang said when they reached them, doing a tremendous job at sounding surprised. “And Sunwoong is here too! Wow, what a coincidence. Myungsoo and I were just playing some basketball, but what a surprise to see you guys.”

In his head, Myungsoo thought that what Sarang said sounded quite unconvincing, but Sunwoong and Seolhyun seemed to buy it, so maybe it was just him.

“We were just heading towards a café, but I didn’t expect to see you guys here at all,” Sunwoong said.

“You’re going to a café?” Sarang exaggerated a shocked expression. “We’re actually heading there too! Let’s go together.”

She didn’t wait for a reply as she hooked her arm through Sunwoong’s and started walking, but not before turning around to give Myungsoo an inconspicuous wink before continuing onwards.

Myungsoo didn’t know what to do. He was not prepared to be in this situation at all. Sarang should have told him that she was going to leave him behind with Seolhyun before actually leaving him behind with the girl. How in the world was he going to be able to talk to his goddess when he wasn’t even prepared to talk to her?

“So… how are you?” Turns out that the answer to his previous question directed towards himself was that he was going to converse to his goddess by asking the most insanely boring question anyone could have ever asked. Well, at least he didn’t ask her about the weather.

“I’m fine, but why are you asking me that when we already saw each other a few hours ago before leaving work?” she giggled.

“Oh… right. Um…” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “The weather is pretty nice, isn’t it?”

Great, now he’s talking about the weather after strictly forbidding himself from talking about this boring topic to his crush. Myungsoo mentally face palmed himself.

The walk towards the café was going to be a long one.

---

 

“By café, you meant a cat café?”

The four had just entered the café a few minutes ago, but Myungsoo was already playing with a cat, Seolhyun was ordering a drink, and Sarang could only stare at the place in bewilderment. “It’s 9 o’clock at night. Why in the world are you two going to a cat café?” Sarang directed the question towards Sunwoong.

He shrugged in response. “It was a stressful day at work. You were there, so you should know,” he said. “I was walking her home, but then we ended up eating at a restaurant for some time. As we were eating, she was still complaining about how y the boss was today, so I suggested that we should relieve stress somehow.”

“Then she said that we should go to a cat café and I agreed, but truthfully, I’m more of a dog person. She’s the one who likes cats, but I agreed to come here with her since I wanted to spend time with her, even if it means that I have to be in a room full of these… things.”

He looked at the cats in the room and scrunched his face. “I don’t like them that much, though. They’re not cute.”

“What are you talking about? They’re the cutest thing in this whole world!” Sarang shot back, unintentionally revealing her bias towards cats. She just couldn’t help it since she pretty much was a cat, which meant that her cat biasness made some sense.

He chuckled. “So I guess you’re a cat-lover too, huh?”

She realized that she just had an outburst, and awkwardly cleared . “I guess you can say that.”

“You’re adorable!” Myungsoo squealed as he was playing with a black and white cat. The little feline was jumping and pawing at the feather that he was waving above it, causing for Myungsoo to be overloaded with its cuteness.

“You remind me of Sarang when I played with her like this. It wasn’t a feather, though. I played with her using a laser pointer, but she kept pouncing on it and pawing at it just like you’re doing now.”

He kept playing with the cat with a wide grin on his face, not able to stop smiling. “Myungsoo.” He snapped out of it at the call of his name, and looked up.

“Here’s your drink.” Seolhyun handed him his beverage and he took it gladly. “I guess you like cats, too,” she said.

“I do. I love cats. They’re adorable.” He resumed playing with the cat before continuing. “You know, I used to have a cat. I love her. She’s actually way cuter than all of these guys. No offense, little guy.”

He directed the last part to the cat, but it was completely oblivious of him even saying anything. It simply was too busy playing and being a cat to be offended or even bothering to listen to a human’s conversation.

“You used to have a cat? Do you still have her?”

“Not really. She’s not really…” He stopped.

She’s not a cat anymore, he finished in his thoughts. He couldn’t tell Seolhyun that his cat turned into a human, therefore resulting in him not having a cat any longer, but at the same time still having a cat since Sarang was still with him even if she’s currently in a human form. It was complicated, and telling Seolhyun that would only cause for her to stare at him like he was crazy.

“I just don’t have her anymore… at least not in cat form,” he quietly muttered the last part in a way that only he could hear it.

She nodded. “What was her name?” she questioned out of curiosity.

“Saran—“ He stopped before he could finish. He had no plans of trying to explain the whole Sarang is a cat situation, but now he ended up giving her name away as his cat.

“Sa… rang? You named her Sarang?” Seolhyun asked with furrowed eyebrows. “Did you name her after Choi Sarang-ssi?”

Myungsoo let out a quiet sigh of relief from seeing that she had made no connection to the idea that Sarang actually was his cat. “Yeah, I guess I did name my cat after her,” he said with a nervous laugh.

“You must be really close to her.”

“Yeah, I am. I think that we’re quite close. She might disagree, but I believe that we are.”

“I don’t disagree.” Sarang popped up out of nowhere and smiled at the two. “We are close. Aren’t we?”

“Where did you even come from?” Myungsoo asked at her sudden appearance, his hand clutching his heart from the near heart attack.

“I came from escaping Sunwoong’s annoying rant about how cats are smelly and that dogs are way better.” She narrowed her eyes at Sunwoong before turning back to the two. “I can’t believe that he doesn’t think that cats are cute and call them smelly. Dogs sniff each other’s butts, yet he seems perfectly fine with them!”

“He doesn’t like cats? Then why did he agree to go with me to a cat café?” Seolhyun questioned.

“Because he likes you,” Sarang bluntly answered. Seolhyun’s eyes became slightly wider before she cleared and blushed. “But Seolhyun, you don’t like him in that way, right?” Sarang asked.

“No. Not at all,” Seolhyun immediately replied. “I like him as a friend, and I keep telling him that, but he keeps on chasing after me.”

“Then how about Myungsoo? What do you think of him?”

Myungsoo, who had went back to playing with the cat again, stopped what he was doing and stared at Sarang with wide eyes. Why is she asking Seolhyun that? He then remembered the time he had confessed to Seolhyun, and she had outright rejected him with a bewildered look on her face that he could never forget.

Seolhyun’s going to say that she doesn’t like me. Why is Sarang asking her a question when we all know the answer? He switched his gaze from Sarang to the floor and waited for his heart to be shattered to pieces.

“I… don’t know,” Seolhyun answered. “But I do have to say that I kind of regret rejecting him the time he confessed to me. He’s really sweet and would make a great boyfriend.”

Instead of the broken heart he was anticipating, he was frozen in place while his heart was beating like it was doing some sort of drum solo. She… regrets rejecting me?

“But I’m not saying that I want him as my boyfriend or anything. I just wanted to say that he would make a great boyfriend for anyone,” Seolhyun continued.

And there it was… the shattering of his heart.

“You still don’t want me as your boyfriend?” he said without realizing.

The two turned their attention to him, and he widened his eyes at what he said. “I-I was talking to him.” He quickly pointed at the cat that was now lying down, apparently taking a nap.

Like a miracle, Seolhyun bought it and thought that he really was talking to the cat, but Sarang knew him too well for her to fall for his obvious lie. “You want to be that cat’s boyfriend?” Sarang questioned, holding back a laugh.

“U-Uh… yeah?”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I speak cat and that cat does not want you to be his boyfriend,” Sarang said. “Oh, and you guys should call him Lord Wigglesworth II. He likes it when people call him that.”

“How do you know that he wants us to call him that?” Seolhyun looked at her weirdly.

“Like I said, I speak cat. Right, Lord Wigglesworth II?” She smiled at the feline—turns out that it wasn’t napping as it had opened its eyes at the sound of its name—and he seemed to smile a catty smile before nodding.

“Did that cat just…” Seolhyun had her infamous bewildered expression on her face, but with a slight mixture of confusion in it.

“I’ll be going now. You two can stay here and mingle.” Sarang grabbed both Seolhyun’s and Myungsoo’s arm and pulled them closer together. “Oh, by the way, I may have bought a lot of cat treats without knowing that I had to pay for them, so don’t be surprised if you see Sunwoong fuming.”

She was about to leave, but stayed since she forgot to say something. “Oh, and Sunwoong is pretty well off with his parents having quite a lot of money and continuing to give him huge allowances every month, so don’t feel too guilty when you guys make him pay for things.”

She gave them both one last smile and a pat on their backs before finally leaving.

“She is… interesting,” Seolhyun said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Miso! Come back here! You’re not supposed to eat the actual bag!” Sarang chased after a cat with a bag of cat treats in its mouth. Both of them circled around the room before the chase continued upstairs after the cat darted up there with Sarang right on its tail.

The two who were watching the chase stared at the stairwell where Sarang and the cat disappeared to, and then broke their gaze after around a minute.

“Let’s pretend that we don’t know her,” Myungsoo suggested.

“Good idea.”

“Miso! Look at what you did! Cat treats are all over the place and now I have to clean it up!” Sarang’s voice came from upstairs.

The two sat in silence before bursting into laughter. “Guess she caught it.”

“Yup, guess she did.”

They continued laughing until the giggling and chuckling subsided to an awkward silence. “So… um… cats are cute, right?” Myungsoo mentally face palmed himself immediately after finishing his sentence. He just wasn’t good at starting conversations and he knew it, but knowing it didn’t change anything. He’ll still be a boring topic bringer whether he wanted to be or not.

“Yeah, they’re super cute. I don’t understand why Sunwoong doesn’t like them.”

“I know. I understand him liking dogs and all since dogs are also cute, but I just don’t get him disliking cats. Cats are adorable, loyal, friendly, and playful unlike their stereotypes.”

A soft smile came upon his lips as he described the character traits for cats. These were the exact traits that Sarang had before he found out that she was a CAIL, but even after revealing what she truly was and mostly choosing to stay in her human form, she still had the same character traits that she had before. Her personality didn’t even seem to change one bit, cat or not.

“I really wish that I had a cat,” Seolhyun said. “But my apartment doesn’t allow them.”

“That’s a shame. My apartment at first didn’t allow them either, but then I took Sarang to them. She did her adorable cat magic and they fell in love with her. They allow pets of all kinds in the building now.”

“Wow, that cat is amazing.”

“She is. I remember when she used to jump into my arms whenever I came home. She was also always there for me when I was feeling troubled or down. There were a lot of times where she was mischievous and caused for some trouble, but I could never stay mad at her since she knows that she’s cute and uses it to her advantage.”

Seolhyun giggled. “That’s one smart cat.”

Myungsoo nodded and chuckled. “Yeah.”

They talked a lot more after that, mostly about cats—Sarang in particular—but their conversation ended when Seolhyun checked the time and saw that it was already nearing midnight.

“It’s 11:35,” she gasped. “We still have work tomorrow. I really need to go home and get some sleep.”

She got up and slid her purse onto her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Myungsoo. Tell Sunwoong and Sarang that I’m heading home first.”

“Yeah, I will.” He smiled and waved. “Bye!”

“Bye!” With one last wave from Seolhyun, the door opened and she disappeared as it closed behind her.

Myungsoo let out a breath and smiled to himself. He believed that he did quite well at conversing with Seolhyun this time around, and was extremely satisfied with himself. “Now to find Sarang,” he said before starting towards the second floor.

As he finished walking up the stairs to the second floor, he saw Sarang sitting criss-crossed in a corner, her back facing him, with what looked like an army of cats in front of her. He walked towards her and was about to call her name, but stopped when he heard her say something.

“Alright fellow felines, there is a cat hater under this roof. We need to show this human how adorable, not as smelly as he’s calling us, playful, and awesome we felines are. We need to let him know that stereotypes do not represent our whole community.”

“Today he entered this café, thinking that all of our stereotypes of being aloof and antisocial are true—well, some of the stereotypes do apply to some of us, but that’s still not all of us—but he will leave this café with a whole new outlook on cats. He will no longer categorize us all into one stereotype, but see us each as an individual with individual personalities.”

“And I’m not saying that our fellow felines who are more independent and like to keep to themselves, as bad since they’re fitting the stereotype, but I’m saying that we should change the way in which people look at cats as having only one type of behavior, one type of identity, and one type of personality. We cats are all different in shapes, sizes, fur color and pattern, and etc.”

“Therefore, we should let humans know that. We should let them think otherwise, and a good way to start is to convert Sunwoong, the annoying human with dyed hair and also a cat hater, into a cat lover and supporter. Now who agrees with me?”

There was a chorus of meows from the small crowd of cats. “Great! Now dispatch and remember your mission!”

Sarang gave the cats a salute, the cats did so back—amazing Myungsoo by doing so—and then all left together in a herd, heading downstairs.

Their destination: Sunwoong, the cat hater and human with dyed hair.

“Uh… Sarang?” he finally managed to call.

Sarang’s attention turned to Myungsoo and she stood up. “Oh, Myungsoo!” She started looking behind him in search for someone. “Where’s Seolhyun?”

“She left first.”

“Oh,” she said in reply. “So how did your conversation with her go?”

“It was great! I barely even stutter now, and we talked about cats the whole time,” he answered, a big smile plastered on his face. 

“Cool, cool.” She smiled back at him. “So I guess we should go home. It’s getting really late.”

“Yeah. Let’s go home.”

They started down the stairs to the front exit, but as they were heading towards the door, they couldn’t help but to notice the massive amount of cats surrounding a fellow coworker of theirs.

“Why are these things coming to me? Go away! I don’t like you!” Sunwoong hung onto the back of the chair he was crouching on for dear life, and he looked frightened by how many cats were trying to play with him. It also didn’t help him one bit that his chair was in the middle of the room and the cats decided to sit on all sides of the chair, preventing him from trying to escape.

“My cat soldiers are doing a great job,” Sarang said, proudly.

“I can’t believe that you can actually speak cat.”

She shrugged, nonchalantly. “It’s a benefit of being one.”

“Shouldn’t we help him? He looks petrified.”

“He’ll be fine. I reached an agreement with them before about not being aggressive towards him, so it’s highly unlikely that my friends are going to break that promise and scratch him unless it was absolutely necessary in a form of self defense.”

She then smiled. “So let’s go,” she said as she walked to the exit.

Myungsoo glanced at Sunwoong, shrugged, and followed her out. 

---

 

Happy late thanksgivings! As a standard procedure of the holiday, I'll like to thank you guys for reading, subscribing, upvoting, commenting, and simply viewing my story. Thank you guys so much for your support! It's always fun to write and have you guys read it!^^ I'll also thank this world for providing us with animals of all kinds from dogs, cats, tardigrades, and etc.

And as a way to show you guys how grateful I am of you for continuing to read this rather strange story, I have updated with two chapters for you guys to read during the weekends! Woohoo! Or you can read them during the weekdays or not at all. Doesn't really matter, I understand if you don't feel like reading it. I'm also guilty of skipping chapters or delaying my reading at times. 

I also posted two chapters at once today for my apology of being a very slow writer and updater. Sorry about that. ^^;

And last but not least, have a great weekend~!