The Shire's been enveloped in torrential downpour for the past few weeks. 

Constantly. 

Waking up with a light drizzle on one's window and going to bed with thunders blaring to lull you to sleep. 

The Shire's been enveloped in torrential downpour for the past few weeks and Yoongi still forgot to bring with him his trusty umbrella. 

His trusty (and untouched) umbrella that he bought at around the start of the raining season because he felt that the deep emerald colour would compliment his similarly hued rain boots nicely. 

But in the end, the only compliment he got came in the form of laughters as his neighbors would unabashedly point at him from the warm and dry comfort of their own house, as he ran like a madman down the short stretch of the road with his hair plastered all over his sour face and his rainwater-filled boots clutched gingerly around the edges of his fingers. 

Yoongi always swore that he would increase the price of turnips by 200% as a way of retaliation against his 'jolly good' neighbors, but in an act of complete predictability on his part, he never had the actual guts to stick with the accumulating soup of bitterness that had been collecting at the base of his stomach. 

He grumbled to himself a long stretch of action plans that he would immediately take after he stepped onto his comfy (and dry) cottage and strip himself out from the wretchedly drenched fabric. 

Dry myself, draw a bath, heat the soup, pour a shot, go to sleep, dry myself, draw a bath, heat the soup, pour a shot, go to sl-

A long, agonized stopped him abruptly on his track. It came from the side of the road, deep within the shade of the particularly menacing Oldman Willow. 

It was the kind of noise that makes you pull your duvet until it covers the base of your nose. The sort of sound that makes the soft baby hairs on your nape stiff as a bead of sweat rolled through them. 

If clever people would instantly vacate the location on the basis of 'screw the unknown, I have no plan to cut my life short by getting the heeblejeebles scared out of me', Yoongi was different. He instead stepped into the (completely covered in raindrops, mind you) bushes along the pathways and ducked his head low as he spoke quite loudly,

"Heeeere kitty kitty kitty." 

It was

The sound of a cat yowling.

Of course, he, as the Shire's resident cat 'man / person' (if he could choose, he'd call himself the cat lord but that would be embarrassing) would be able to distinguish between the sound distressed cats make and the sound of spirits of the undead. To be fair, most people would've taken their thousandth steps already before they were able to make their guesses, so it truly was up to Yoongi to rescue this poor little feline pal of his, whoever it might be, from whatever sticky situation it'd gotten itself into.

"There you are," a triumphant grunt escaped through his pursed lips when he finally saw the poor sod's drenched fur peeking through a tangly bit of thorny vines. What he guessed to be once a pristine white mantle was now almost unrecognizable due to the amount of mud it'd managed to splash onto itself through the cat's effort to wiggle itself free from the grip of the vines. 

Once again it yowled, loud and still managing to pierce through his ears even with the pattering sound of rain from atop his head. For once, just this once, the rain (and the muddy earth masking the sound of his incoming steps) acted in his favour because the added chaos and cacophony of loud noises acted as some sort of distraction for the cat, reducing the chances that it would once again panic and hurt itself even further.

'She,' he corrected himself as he took another careful, ginger steps toward the wounded cat, 'this one is a she.' 

Its- her blue eye, only the left one, seemingly pierced through his soul when the cat finally took notice of his presence, when Yoongi took one misstep where his foot landed on a twig and the sound of it cracking seemingly grew louder than any thunderbolts he'd heard in his life because in that one moment he was seemingly bewitched with this sense of... 

Magic. 

Old, powerful magic. 

He was snapped out of his daze with another yowl coming out from the distressed animal, reminding him that the cat was just that. A cat. 

"O...ok, all right there, all right." His voice ended with a grunting 'oop' as he squatted down to the damp, mossy earth a considerable length away from the cat and stretched his upper body as far as it could be stretched. When that didn't work, he shimmied a bit closer, as close as he could without getting his arms scratched up by the thorns. Considering how the only sport he ever does was picking up crates of egg from the floor to its designated shelf, the fact that he could still stretch was already a great feat. 

His face contorted in complete concentration as he grunted and wiggled his fingers in the effort to somehow entice the cat to his holds? Somehow? Eventhough if the cat could escape from the trap herself, she wouldn't even need his help in the first place. 

Realizing that his meek effort was all for naught, Yoongi huffed and threw his arms back to his side, wiping the combination of sweat and raindrops from his temple.

In that moment of rest, his gaze once again met with the cat's. Its blue-brown eyes staring at him as if she was telling him, 'you coward.' 

He tried to avert his eyes, deflecting the insulting look a cat was giving him. A cat. A cat was harassing him, emotionally. It was punctuated when she let out a short chitter, as if she was clucking her tongue at him. 

"You know what? Ok. OK!" Defeated (by a cat), Yoongi shambled on forward and right into the immediate radius of the thorny, bushy vine. To be fair, his hesitancy towards doing so was justified when he already got a scratch on his forehead before 5 seconds have even passed. 

"Don't move. It's ok, it's all right I'm here to help you." 5 scratches and 5 grunts later, Yoongi finally made contact with the feline, which despite its status as a feline (a wounded, scared one too, while we're at it), was being completely calm and cooperative and even helpful to his efforts in rescuing her.

Yoongi didn't even get a scratch from the cat, not even one. Which was a miraculous feat, as usually, he would always sport two to three bandages on either his arms or his face after he'd finish rescuing a cat from any silly situations.

Well, he will still sport some bandages after this, but it won't be because of the cat, that one he was sure. 

It was as if the cat wanted to be rescued. It was as if... it understood the meaning of 'don't move.'

The thought was quickly shot down by Yoongi, 'must be a very well trained domestic cat.' 

Sentient cat? Impossible. 

5 minutes later, miracle happened and the knots of vines finally fell apart just when Yoongi'd started to wonder how this cat even managed to get herself 'stuck' in this kind of absurd manner. Holding the scared (or is it?) cat in his arms, Yoongi braved his way out from the wretched thorny of nature, sacrificing another few dozen scratches in return for freedom. 

"Poor child," he muttered when the cat curled itself in his holds. Seemingly content that it was liberated from the painful vines and traded the cold evening air for his welcoming warmth, the cat purred and snuggled the sides of its face onto his arms. 

The freshly scratched state of his skin made it an effort for Yoongi not to let out a painful yelp. He only half-smile-half-cringed as he made his way back to civilization and the promise of dry land. 

Holding the cat up close like this, Yoongi noticed the jade-colored band of frilly lace collar hanging loose around its neck. 'Fancy,' he thought, pulling the frayed ribbon off its sodden fur. 'But unsalvageable.' It must've caught onto the vines during the cat's initial struggles, pulling all the threads loose. The splotches of mud on its delicate material would've rendered the thing unwearable too anyway, turning the originally brilliant green lace into what looked more like a decomposed, weeks old dead grass. 

Yoongi didn't even bother picking it up from the ground when the thread (no longer lace, mind you, more like a messily crocheted spiderweb) slipped from his fingers and plopped onto the muddy road, immediately disappearing when it soaked up more rainwater and sunk under the shallow puddle of mud sludge. 'It's just a collar.' More like a strip of ribbon, but I digress, 'I'll just find a replacement for it.' 

"I will get you clean and dry, and tomorrow we can find your owner, okay?" Poor sod must be worried that they lost this pretty thing. 

During his gallant rescue, the rain had calmed down to a mere drizzle (thank the lords), and the clouds were even nice enough to part, which allowed the last slivers of daylight to help Yoongi navigate his way back to his cosy cottage. One particular ray even fell conveniently on his keyhole, preventing him from having to blindly struggle with matching his key onto the darned keyhole. 

Ignoring his drenched state, Yoongi found himself humming. Humming. With the cat's purring and the rain drizzling and the sun setting, Yoongi was somehow... happy? 

Which was weird. 

Because he was more mudman than human and usually he hates that. 

"You wait here, all right?" He unhooked one of the wooly throw blanket he kept hanging on lamps around his living room and plopped it at the side of the door, nestling the cat on the warm makeshift bed located near the coat hanger with no coats, as all his coats was hanging at the laundry room, begging for a day of sunshine so they could finally dry. 

"Oh dear," he mumbled when the mud rubbing off onto the blanket revealed a gash of considerable size along the cat's hind leg, "this has taken a turn for the worst..." 

His efforts of further cleaning the mud, before it went dry and chalky and be ten times more annoying to clean then if he'd finish the deed right then and there, was interrupted by water dripping down his hair and either they would enter his eyes and render him momentarily blind, or they would drop onto the cat and cause it to flinch uncomfortably. 

After a few minutes of grunting and mild cursing have come and go and without considerable advancement in the cleaning of the cat, Yoongi finally decided to give up and left the poor cat, well... alone. Being a cat.

"Oh for goodness sake, you know what, you stay there for a bit and let me fix this... mess of a person!" He said while sauntering off to his bathroom. 

He only realize of how stupid he was for leaving a dirty (and most probably curious) cat to freely roam around his pristine living room when the bucketful of cold water hit him square on the head. Or at least he'd like to believe it's pristine. (It's not)

His teeth chattered as he cleaned his body in record time. Not having the privilege to heat up a pot of hot water to at least make his showering experience a bit more bearable, Yoongi had to instead keep his jaw locked and fists balled to make it through the quick wash. For a moment trying to be as tough as those dwarfs in the children adventure books he so liked to read.

Oh, who are we kidding, Yoongi kept that 'tough-dwarf' facade for only 2 seconds before he reverted back to squealing his way through the rest of the 2 minutes duck-bath while hopping around on either foot as if the floor he was standing was made out of scalding hot volcanic rocks. 

Before he knew it, all traces of soap were eradicated from his skin and he was more than ready to slip into his pajamas. Usually, Yoongi'd hang them in front of a nicely running fireplace. But considering the hasty nature of this evening, those 2 maroon, filigreed fabrics were as cold as the moon's moons and he must resort to wearing 2 layers of bathrobe until he could get his fireplace up and running. 

And to do so, he has to go back to the living room. 

Before stepping his foot past the threshold of the connecting corridor, Yoongi braced himself to a scene of mayhem. As in, muddy footprints from floor to ceiling. 

Turns out, it really was a good idea for him to do that short bit of mental-bracing taking some deep breaths. But not for the fact that he might see his living room in a ransacked state, oh no. 

It was to prevent him from getting a heart attack when he finally saw the unknown stranger sleeping right beside his beloved couch. 

In that quick moment between the tranquility of shock and his survival instinct kicking in, Yoongi noticed three things. 

One, the stranger was .

Two, he left his key dangling on the door's keyhole. 

Three, 

The cat's escaped. 
 

A/N: WHEEEEEE first chapter!!! so yeah. What do you think? Yoongi is super sour and i love every bit of it. No Jieun yet but she's there (yes she is) xp please leave some comments and such it'll really make my day (and your day too, I hope).