When asked about Nam Taehyun, the rest of WINNER members seem to be on the same page altogether.

“He’s a cat,” Kang Seungyoon said a while ago.

“A romantic cat,” Lee Seunghoon said in another occasion.

Song Mino can’t agree more. If there’s any animal that resembles Taehyun in this world, it is undoubtedly a cat.

It’s not about Taehyun’s appearance (although, on closer observation, he does have a pair of sharp, cattish eyes), but more about his attitude. He is the kind of guy who will maintain distance from people he has just met, never displaying signs of trust too easily. He gets interested in so many things and wants to do everything all at once, but flees away in an instant whenever anyone tells him to do something he doesn’t particularly like. In the matter of skinship, he is probably the least enthusiastic, especially when it is forced. However, he will show signs of irritation if no one pays him the attention he actually craves for, skinship included.

In Mino’s opinion, personally, Taehyun has horrible mood swings, and it takes forever to adjust to his sudden changes.

That’s why the analogy fits him perfectly. Just like a cat; one minute he is docile and friendly, the next he is hostile and untouchable.

But then that is merely an analogy; a fictional metaphor to describe the maknae.

It has not—not ever—crossed their minds that the analogy might actually come true.

Well, it is not plausible anyway to think that a human being can somehow turn into an animal. This is not some mythology world we are living in. It happens in dreams, but when we wake up, it will just stay as it is: a dream. No one will be walking around with tails on their backs and whiskers on their faces.

But how to explain what happens to Taehyun?

~

After a list of appointments to attend, the day ends more or less normally. Jinwoo is anxious to watch the newest episode of a drama he’s been so into lately. Seunghoon says he wants to sleep for two days (which is impossible, because the next morning they have more schedules to attend to). Seungyoon doesn’t say anything, but he looks like he’s about to fall asleep on his feet. Meanwhile, Taehyun…

Mino looks to his side where Taehyun is practically glued, eye-to-screen, to his handphone.

He’s been like that for probably an hour, or at least ever since the five of them arrived at their dorm. His face is taut in a tense expression; his thumbs were even tauter, hovering above the screen. He repeatedly lets out a tired sigh, as if he is dying to get whatever-is-happening-on-his-phone over with.

Mino is curious, but he knows better than to disturb an already upset Taehyun (he learned that the hard way—those early trainee days a harsh reminder in his brain). He drags his steps into his bedroom, yawning. A part of his mind lingers on Taehyun and his phone, but the other part is already floating all the way to the warm and comfortable cocoon that is his bed.

~

Thirty minutes later, feeling fuzzy after a hot bath and comfy in cotton shorts and oversized t-shirt, Mino is already making his way to where a part of his mind has gone earlier. He plans on writing a line or two in his diary before getting his beauty sleep.

He hasn’t even got three feet away from the bathroom when a small, furry thing attacks him fair and square on the face.

After a minute (that feels like a whole hour for Mino) of struggling, pulling, and screaming, Mino succeeds yanking away the creature from his face. To his shock, he finds that it is a cat.

It’s an adult-sized cat, with fur of a mix of black and white. Its ears are pointy, and its eyes are glowing with an almost golden light. Although its face is mostly white, above its eyes are two funny looking patch of black fur, making it as if it has a pair of slanted eyebrows.

Which then brings everyone (Seungyoon, Seunghoon, and Jinwoo—who has even left his drama because he heard Mino’s scream) to the current situation: what is a cat doing in their dorm? How did it get in?

Nobody in their dorm owns a pet—except Seunghoon and his precious Lee Hee, but even that little Chihuahua is not living in the dorm at the moment, but in Seunghoon’s parents’ place. And a cat, well, although Seungyoon and Mino like cats (Mino more because he can’t be touching dogs for more than 20 minutes without sneezing his head off), they haven’t actually thought of getting one for a pet. As far as Mino knows, too, no one else on the same floor as they are has cats either. And even if someone does, there is no way the cat can walk into their dorm without anyone letting it in.

The four of them spend the next fifteen minutes making efforts to calm the cat down. It has jumped away from Mino’s face to the sofa in the living room. Its back is curved, its fur bristle in panic or fear. It hasn’t stopped screeching ever since it left Mino’s face, its voice so loud the people next door no doubt hear it.

“Whose cat is it?” Jinwoo asks, carefully trying to approach the sofa.

“I don’t know,” Seunghoon answers, crouching a few feet away from the same sofa. Apparently, he is not as fond of cats as he is of dogs. “Hyung! Hyung, get it before it ruins our sofa!”

“Stop shouting!” Seungyoon inches toward the sofa from the opposite direction as Jinwoo. “You’ll only scare it off even more!”

Mino, feeling a little bit traumatized after the cat-attack, sits next to Seunghoon. His heart is beating with a rhythm that must not be healthy, and his brain is still trying to process what is happening before his eyes.

And then some gears begin turning, solving the equation in which 2 + 2 equals 4, and he looks around in confusion.

“Where is Taehyun?”

~

Just when finally Jinwoo succeeds catching the cat (after a lot of coaxing that involves a can of tuna, three pieces of beef jerky, and Seungyoon singing 5 different lullabies), the rest of them realize that they have a missing maknae.

Taehyun is not in his room. He is not in the bathroom, either. He doesn’t seem to be anywhere inside the dorm, but nobody saw him leave. Mino wonders if it isn’t just because all of them were too preoccupied with the damn cat, so no one pays attention to anything else including Taehyun.

But then Seungyoon finds that one of Taehyun’s aromatic candles has been lit. Considering Taehyun’s habit, he must have been in the middle of his ‘ritual’ before going to sleep, but instead of finishing the ‘ritual’ by playing some of his favorite slow songs while he’s lounging in his bed, he is nowhere to be found.

“Let’s just call him and ask him where he is,” Seunghoon says.

“I’ll do that,” Mino runs to his own room to get his phone, searches ‘bastard maknae’, and hits the call button in an instant.

Taehyun’s ringtone reverberates through the dorm.

“Hey…” Seungyoon cuts off. “The phone is there.” He points to Taehyun’s bed. Taehyun’s phone is there, on top of the sheet, the screen glowing and the sound ringing consistently. Right next to it is a bundle of clothes that looks like the stuff that Taehyun wore earlier.

Mino frowns, hanging up.

Odd. Nam Taehyun has never gone anywhere without his phone… not even to the bathroom.

“Where is—calm down, kitty, you’re going to scratch my face—Taehyun—ouch!” Jinwoo struggles to make sure the cat stay still in his arms… very much to no avail.

Mino walks into Taehyun’s room (the cat meows even louder for some reason) and grabs the phone from the bed. The notice on the screen says, expectedly, ‘One missed call from Song Min Ho’.

Before Mino has the chance to unlock the screen, Jinwoo and Seungyoon yelp, Seunghoon shrieks, and something scurries across the floor in a speed of light.

The next thing Mino knows is that there is a bundle of black-and-white fur in his hands. It is meowing insistently. Its front paws are punching Mino’s chest (luckily it’s not using its claws) over and over again. It clings very stubbornly to him even when he tries to put it down.

“Okay! Okay!” Mino squeals, one hand pocketing Taehyun’s phone and the other hand busily calming the panicking cat. “What is going on with you? Calm down before you tear my t-shirt into pieces!”

~

For some reason, the cat stops panicking so much after Mino threatens to throw it out the window. He wouldn’t, of course; he doesn’t have the heart to. The only animals he can hurt are ants, but there’s a long story of vengeance between him versus the ants to justify his hatred toward them. Hurting fluffy creatures like cats and dogs is categorized as a crime of its own in Mino’s mind.

No, Mino doesn’t like hurting or threatening cats, but at least the threat works.

However, seeing that the cat only listens to Mino, Seungyoon appoints the rapper to be in charge of it for the night.

“We’ll figure out what to do with it in the morning,” the leader says. “If it really does belong to one of our neighbors, we’ll return it to its owner. But if it turns out to be a stray cat, I don’t know, let’s find the nearest pet shop or whatever.”

~

Despite Mino’s worries, the cat falls asleep in a blink of an eye.

Maybe it is tired after all the screaming and struggling all over the place. Maybe it is just the usual sleeping hour for cats… if there’s such a thing.

Compared to how fussy it was earlier, it looks very peaceful and rather cute. It snuggles between the sheet and Mino’s blanket, curled up into a ball of fur. It is making a soft purring sound; a weird, if not a rather pleasant addition to Mino’s otherwise silent bedroom. The pair of black, slanted ‘eyebrows’ on the cat’s forehead seems to wrinkle in a pitiful frown.

Somehow, the sight reminds Mino of Taehyun.

“Where are you, Taehyunie?” he sighs. “You know you can’t go outside without permission… are you trying to get yourself in trouble now?”

Mino lies down (carefully, for fear of waking the cat), thinking about the last time Taehyun went outside. He only went to spend some time with his mother, but then apparently a nosy paparazzi was following him, and the next day, the photos were spread on the internet.

Mino knows this is one of the downsides of being idols. However, understanding that fact and accepting it are two different things.

Yawning, Mino tries to keep his mind in positive vibe. Maybe Taehyun only went to the convenience store nearby. He will be back soon. He will be in his room, purring like this little cat right here, and Seungyoon will give him hell first thing in the morning.

***