Lee Haneul mentally revised her psychology vocab as she bagged groceries. Living on her own in Seoul while in college meant she had no spare time to mess around. The girl had an athletic build and stood at a solid five foot six, making her slightly bigger than average. She wasn’t super buff by any means, but growing up on a farm where she tended to animals and took care of plots of crops created a rigid yet thin muscular infrastructure. The girl knew nothing about sports so a scholarship was sadly out of the question. This left her with shift upon shift of minimum wage in order to pay for her tiny apartment and massive tuition. Haneul sat the last sack of groceries in the little old lady’s cart and forced a smile as she accidentally made eye contact. The girl looked up and saw no new items rolling down the conveyor belt her way, so she pulled the deck of flash cards from the pocket of her work uniform and checked over the few words she couldn’t remember.

    “Do you need help with that?” The boy who worked as the cashier, name unknown to Haneul, asked.

    “No, I’m good,” the girl responded without lifting her head to look at him. She glanced over one last definition before shuffling the cards and checked the wall clock behind her.

    “My shift is over, god bless,” Haneul said to herself. She said nothing to the cashier boy before walking up to the front desk and heading back into the staff room. The girl clocked out and picked up her backpack from where she tucked in away in the corner some five hours ago. She slung it on and made her way out of the store, saying goodbye to no one as she left.

    Her apartment was actually a small loft like area on the ground floor of a tall concrete  building that housed several offices and small businesses. The front door was only accessible from a long walk down a dimly lit alleyway, which seemed sketchy to Haneul her first few nights living here. But due to the unpleasant view, rent was dirt cheap and her only option. She had lived in the city for exactly one week now, so upgrading her living space wasn’t a main priority. The girl held her key ring in the middle of a closed fist, splaying each key out between her fingers as a safety precaution that probably wasn’t useful, but gave her a bit more confidence when walking. A lone streetlight stood in the alleyway fifteen feet from the apartment door and illuminated a figure crouched on Haneul’s doorstep. Once she saw the shadow, the girl froze and clenched her makeshift weapon even tighter. She thought of what to do, and soon enough came to the conclusion that standing there wouldn’t solve anything.

    The girl took in a deep breath and started taking small steps towards the figure. She squinted her eyes and pieced together that it was a person crouched down on the balls of their feet, head tucked down with hands covering the scalp. As she creeped closer, she noticed the person had on a bright pink hat and a navy, white and pink striped sweater. With each step the person’s outline became more and more vivid and small details started to reveal themselves. This person wore dark skin tight jeans and clean tennis shoes. They didn’t look dirty, so it probably wasn't a random homeless person. As Haneul creeped closer, she was now passing the street light and her shadow had crossed from behind her to in front of her, and came closer to overlapping with the strangers. The girl was mid step when the person's head shot up and looked in her direction, causing a jolt of shock to course through Haneul. The girl could felt her heart pound in her ears as she looked at the person, a boy, who stared back at her. Haneul squinted and realized they weren’t wearing a hat, but his hair was actually dyed pink. She saw something moving within the fluff of hair and noticed...cat ears?

    Haneul let out her breath and a memory of something on the news played in her mind. A recent trend in Japan that had started creeping in Korea, they were called cat boys/girls. She found it interesting, so she spend a minute or two doing a bit of her own research. From what she remembered, they were normal humans who rich people often adopted as children, and took to sketchy “plastic surgeons” where their dna would be infused with a diluted amount of feline matter. This caused the cute cat ear and tail effect, and even gave the victims a higher drive that aligned with the moon’s cycle, which pleased people who had a kink for that kind of thing. The crossbreeding was seen as something of a fashion trend as rich celebrities and athletes, even their less famous but equally wealthy partners, would parade their cat children or even cat lovers around. They were seen as something exotic and beautiful, but also controversial as some animal activist groups considered it . But Haneul saw it as nothing better than selective human trafficking. Then again, she had never saw one in real life before, and had no idea what really went on between them and the people who “owned” them.