The moment he bent down, I sprang again.
I extended every claw I had and tore into his ugly face without mercy.
Scratch attack!!!
“Agh! Aaaagh!!”
The idiot squeezed his eyes shut and toppled backward again. He started flailing his fists at me, but I dodged them, bit his calf one more time, and darted away.
“Blegh.”
Like an attack that pathetic was ever going to hit me.
I leaped onto the windowsill and swished my tail back and forth, deliberately taunting him.
The bastard was already completely out of his mind with rage, so naturally, he took the bait.
“You! Get back here! Fuck…!”
I jumped down outside the window, and he immediately climbed after me.
So I really am his target.
In the original webtoon, he broke in at the dead of night to kidnap Aria.
But right now, it seemed like that bastard had come for me instead.
Apparently, he’d redirected all his anger away from Aria and onto me.
That was probably why he’d committed the crime earlier than he had in the original story.
If anything, this worked out better.
Once I’d successfully lured him out of the shop, I stopped and turned to face him.
I was going to test the ability Kkami had given me.
“Got you—”
The instant he closed in behind me—
“Myaaaang, meow-meow-meow!”
Shrink the Earth to an Inch, meow-meow-meow!
I shouted it out and took one step forward.
A bizarre sensation washed over me.
Space warped.
And in an instant, the scenery around us twisted apart.
The moonlit trees vanished.
In their place was a pitch-black space enclosed by walls.
“W-where the hell are we?!”
The bastard who’d been about to grab me recoiled and frantically looked around.
I turned back toward him with grim determination.
It didn’t matter where we were.
We’re settling this tonight, you stalker bastard.
I charged first.
Like some rabid cat, I sank my teeth hard into his arm and buried my claws in his clothes.
“Agh!!”
I scrambled rapidly up his back while he screamed, then started pounding the back of his head with everything I had.
Stop creeping on Aria! Stop doing disgusting shit to her! Stop breaking into other people’s homes!!!
Smack! Smack! Smack-smack! Smack!
The satisfying sound of my front paws beating him echoed through the alley.
Then, while I was still laying into him, one of his hands suddenly reached back and caught me.
He grabbed my head and body and forcibly yanked me away.
I dug my claws into his clothes and tried to hold on, but he was stronger.
Rrrrip—
His clothes tore.
And one of my claws snapped.
The bastard finally managed to rip me off his back and hurled me straight onto the ground.
“Kyaang!”
I landed badly and twisted one of my hind legs.
As I limped and tried to force myself back up, a shoe appeared in front of my face.
Then horrific pain exploded through my stomach.
He kicked me like a ball, and my body rolled helplessly across the ground.
The power behind it was on a completely different level from anything I’d done to him.
…Figures a loser like this would use his full strength against a tiny cat.
“…You fucking cat keep pissing me off…! Huh?!”
He stalked over and glared down at me, his voice shaking with rage.
“Because of you! Aria hates me because of you! Aria… Aria’s the only woman who’s ever going to love me!”
“KHYAAAGH!!”
Why the fuck would Aria ever date someone like you?
Did somebody shoot you in the head?
I tried to push off the ground so I could dodge, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
Another burst of pain struck me, and my vision went black for a second.
Thud. Thud!
My body rolled, stopped, then rolled again.
The bastard kept kicking me in the stomach like a lunatic.
It really felt like he was trying to kill me.
…For a moment, I thought of Coco.
Coco must have hurt this badly too. Because of some fucking human piece of shit like this….
Something warm and metallic rose in my throat.
I couldn’t just lie there and let him beat me to death.
I forced myself to dodge the next kick with everything I had left.
Then I pushed off the ground on all four paws and tried to run.
“You disgusting little shit. You got beaten that badly and you still have enough strength to run?”
His hand was faster.
He seized me around the neck with one hand and lifted me high into the air.
“I could kill something like you with one hand…. Heh.”
A small drop of blood fell onto his sneering face.
Probably from my open mouth.
“…Kek… kyaong.”
I thrashed with everything I had.
I extended my claws and raked at his arm, but the pressure crushing my throat only grew stronger.
“Heh-heh… Look at you struggling so desperately to stay alive…. Aria will probably think you ran away. Heh.”
The way he grinned while watching me suffer made him look exactly like the lunatic he was.
…But I couldn’t just let him do this to me.
It was infuriating.
Then—
His grip suddenly loosened.
My body dropped to the ground.
Thump!
I hit the floor completely unprepared, but my whole body already hurt so badly that I barely felt the impact.
I’m alive.
I dragged in ragged breaths and forced my eyes open despite how badly they wanted to close.
Someone had entered the alley.
A tall man stood there, a black robe pulled low over his head.
It was too dark to make him out clearly, but I caught a glimpse of the lower half of his face beneath the robe.
“W-who are you?”
“…….”
“I asked who the hell you are!”
The bastard in front of me immediately turned wary and shouted at him.
The man standing some distance away said nothing.
He merely watched us at his leisure, as though he were enjoying the scene.
And all the while, the bastard standing over me didn’t move either.
Typical coward.
The second someone was watching, he suddenly couldn’t bring himself to keep doing something awful.
As if voicing my exact thought, the distant man finally spoke.
“Why did you stop?”
“…….”
“Weren’t you kicking that cat and strangling it just a moment ago?”
“……! What’s it to you if I beat a cat?! You’re not even its owner!”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
Neat, measured footsteps echoed through the alley.
As the man gradually approached, the bastard apparently decided he was physically outmatched and tried to bolt.
“But I can still help.”
The man didn’t even bother grabbing him.
He simply spoke in a leisurely voice.
Then, in a tone so low I could barely hear it, he began reciting something.
It sounded almost like a prayer.
Or perhaps the incantation for some dangerous curse.
“W-what the hell is this?!”
The bastard suddenly froze mid-escape and cried out in shock.
Even in the darkness, eerie red symbols glimmered faintly.
Small marks had appeared over both his body and mine.
The strange, unsettling patterns soon sank into our chests.
Don’t tell me this is….
The instant I realized what it might be—
“Guhk!!”
The bastard coughed up blood.
Then he clutched his stomach and collapsed to the ground.
“Urgh… aaagh….”
Bright red blood poured from his mouth as he writhed in pain.
But unlike him, I didn’t feel any pain at all.
Then those same unhurried footsteps sounded again.
“…Ugh… it… it hurts….”
The man stopped in front of the bastard’s head as he groaned on the ground.
“S-save me. Please….”
“Do you want to live?”
Looking down at the pleading man, he spoke softly, as though offering him a chance.
“Tell me ten reasons you deserve to live. Then I’ll spare you.”
“My… my father is sick… back home. I’m only… thirty… Ghh… I still need to get married… I need to start a family….”
“Ha ha ha.”
The man laughed.
His voice was strangely languid and refreshing.
“Now I understand what you meant when you said it was funny watching something struggle to stay alive.”
“…Ghh… you… you fucking… bastard…!”
“There’s no need to feel so wronged. I only returned what you did to you.”
The man lowered his head and continued in a gentle, almost soothing voice.
Like he was telling an entertaining bedtime story to a child.
“Tomorrow morning, someone will find your body cold.”
“…….”
“They’ll assume you had the bad luck to get beaten to death by some vagrant on the street.”
His face, twisted in agony, turned corpse-pale.
“When really, you were beaten to death by yourself.”
“I-I’ll… apologize. Guhk… agh… Please… spare me—”
“May you find peaceful rest.”
As though the man before him were already dead, he quietly offered him a final blessing and turned away.
…Seeing it in person, that ability was terrifying.
He had transferred every injury I’d suffered directly onto that bastard.
And as far as I knew, there was only one person in this world who could do something like that.
The smooth toe of a shoe stopped in front of me.
I raised my head.
Blood-red eyes looked down at me.
“Stay still.”
“…Woong.”
Large hands lifted me from the ground.
“Good.”
A hand gently stroked the top of my head.
I didn’t even have enough strength left to protest.
My consciousness kept slipping away.
Beyond my darkening vision, I could just make out the man’s chin.
And the pleasant curve of his lips.
“…Shall we go together?”
At last, I surrendered myself to the strangely peaceful sensation and lost consciousness.
******
Early the next morning, Raymon rode out of the capital.
After about an hour, he arrived at the village of Oslin.
He made his way through the familiar streets and eventually reached an area thick with green trees.
There stood a small two-story house.
On the first floor was a shop with a wooden sign reading Aria’s Teahouse.
Raymon tied his horse to a nearby tree and was just about to enter when the door suddenly flew open.
“…Ah!”
“……!”
A woman stumbled straight into his arms.
Raymon looked down at her.
His heart jolted from the surprise.
Then he realized she was sobbing.
And just as quickly, his heart went cold.
“Sniff… Mr. Raymon.”