Back at the cave, Liam built a campfire and set out a few cans of food and some bread to warm over the flames.
After buying the climbing equipment, he had already spent almost all the money Kent had paid him.
He hadn’t expected even secondhand gear to be so expensive.
It looked like he needed to find another way to make some money.
He couldn’t live on canned food forever.
Once the food was hot, Watson followed the smell over and lay down beside him.
That was when Liam noticed a small kitten perched on Watson’s back.
Its head was white, while the rest of its body was black.
He reached over and scratched the kitten under the chin, and it immediately began to purr.
After petting it for a while, Liam withdrew his hand.
“Little one, why did you stop?”
The voice of a child came from the kitten.
“I’m about to eat.”
Liam answered calmly, tearing off a piece of bread and eating it with the heated canned food.
For a moment, silence settled over them.
Finally, the kitten couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Little one, why aren’t you asking how I can talk? The people I met before were always so surprised. It was very funny.”
Liam didn’t seem surprised in the slightest.
“What’s so strange about a talking cat? I know some lizards and mice that can talk too.”
Now it was the kitten’s turn to be surprised.
“I see. I must have slept for too long. Has the outside world really changed that much?”
“Can you tell me where you came from? And why do you keep calling me ‘little one’?”
Liam was finally interested.
Up until now, the Events Logbook hadn’t reacted at all.
The kitten showed no intention of hiding anything.
It proudly raised its head.
“Because I’m very old, of course. I’ve existed since this forest first came into being.”
Very old?
Then she had to know quite a lot.
Liam decided to ask about the Thunderbird.
“Do you know the giant bird that lives on the cliff?”
“Of course. That was me.”
“Aren’t you a cat?”
“I’m not a cat. Not long ago, a friend brought a cat here. I liked it, so I took this form.”
“Then what should I call you?”
But if you insist on calling me something, call me Lily.
That was the name of one of my favorite friends.”
Liam went on to ask her many questions.
Lily apparently hadn’t spoken to anyone in a very long time, and she answered nearly everything he asked.
From her explanation, Liam finally understood that the Thunderbird was essentially the forest’s alarm system.
Whenever someone entered that cave, it would awaken.
As for why she had approached Liam, Lily’s answer was simple.
“My instincts told me you were interesting. And if I asked you for something, I knew you would agree.”
Liam smiled.
“What could a creature like you possibly need from me? Now I’m curious.”
“Long ago, strange animals would emerge from the cracks in this forest. Some were dangerous and some were friendly, but they all had one thing in common. They could never live among their own kind.”
“For a long time, people like you would often help me deal with those animals. But lately, there have been more and more humans, while those strange animals have become rarer and rarer. I got bored, so I went to sleep.”
“But I smelled something familiar on you. I think the same thing may be starting to happen to humans now.”
Liam understood immediately.
The familiar scent she meant had to be Kent’s clown costume.
“You’re right. Dealing with things like that is what I’ve always done. But lately, I’ve run into some problems that aren’t so easy to handle.”
“I know. That’s why I’ll stay with you and help.”
Liam found that strange.
“Why are you being so generous? Two minutes ago, I didn’t even know your name.”
Lily climbed onto his head as if the answer were obvious.
“Because I feel like it. That’s reason enough. Besides, I’m very weak right now. I can’t leave this forest on my own.”
Liam nodded.
That explained it.
What she said made sense.
Then he asked one final question.
“Why does your fur look like that?”
“What’s wrong with it? Aren’t I a perfectly normal black cat?”
Instead of answering, Liam took a compass from his bag and used the mirror built into its lid to show Lily her reflection.
Why do I look like this?”
Lily immediately began rubbing frantically at the white fur on her face with both paws.
Strangely, the white coloring actually flowed beneath her paws like water.
After struggling with it for a while, Lily looked up at Liam miserably.
“Little one, what do I do? I can’t get rid of the white. It looks awful.”
Liam studied her seriously for a moment.
“We’ll have to work with it. I’ll tell you where to move the white parts.”
Before long, Lily had taken on an entirely new appearance.
Under Liam’s direction, the white coloring had been moved to her paws, belly, and the lower half of her face.
She looked much more balanced now, though she could no longer pass for a black cat.
She had become a typical black-and-white cat.
“What a shame. I liked being completely black.”
Lily stared dejectedly at her paws.
Liam disagreed.
He thought the black-and-white coloring made her look more lively.
“All right, don’t be upset. I’ll share some of my dinner with you. Consider it a symbol of our partnership.”
Liam poured some canned food onto the lid and set it beside him.
Lily immediately jumped down.
“It seems your customs haven’t changed. You still share precious food with your friends.”
“This is only precious because it’s all I have left.”
…
“The next day, Kent woke from a restless sleep and realized the clown costume was still fused to his body.”
He had actually taken Liam’s warning seriously two days earlier and hurried off to find the former owner of the old house.
Unfortunately, when he reached the old man’s temporary residence, he found nothing.
There had never been an old man selling the house in the first place.
The person who had commissioned the sale had disappeared as well, and every piece of information they had left behind was fake.
Kent returned home disappointed and tried to deal with the problem himself.
First, he stood in front of a mirror and forcibly tore the red nose from his face.
Agonizing pain ripped through him, as if the red nose were part of his own body.
Then, almost immediately, it grew back.
Next, he tried cutting off the costume.
The moment the scissors cut into it, blood poured from the opening.
After hurriedly wrapping the wound in gauze, Kent understood that if he tried to tear the costume off by force, he would die with it.
Once he finally gave up, a strange hunger suddenly welled up inside him.
The carefully prepared meals his wife Meg normally made no longer appealed to him at all.
When he opened the refrigerator to grab a beer, he unexpectedly found himself drawn to the raw meat inside.
It looked incredibly appetizing.
By the time he came back to his senses, he had already devoured every piece of raw meat in the refrigerator.
Now completely at a loss, Kent could only lie on the bed, stare at the bizarre costume covering his body, and bury his face in his hands.