Speak in the language of cats here. v1c1p2

Mission 1: No Cat, No Life p2

I burst out of the classroom, weaved through the crowd of students heading home that filled the hallway, and ran straight out of the school gates and away from the academy grounds.

The curse of death that relentlessly pursues me after I escaped the Domik—the curse that will not allow me to live freely.

But. The mission assigned to me is to fight against this curse and survive. No matter how much suffering it entails.

As I ran along the school route, I endured the searing pain that wracked my body with every step and operated my smartphone.

I sent a short message to my only collaborator in Japan, informing them of the situation.

Кошка『GPS has confirmed your current location. The spot with the highest probability of a cat encounter from there is the riverbank.』

An immediate, inorganic reply came from Koshka.

I felt like clicking my tongue. I was reminded of yesterday’s humiliation.

Кошка『Hurry. If you do not deal with it within ten minutes of the virus’s onset, it will be too late for everything.』

The message that followed spurred me on.

I had no choice but to do it.

If I fail this mission, Anna Grazkaya’s tomorrow will never come.

The riverbed came into view ahead. I veered off the levee path and slid down the dirt slope overgrown with withered grass.

“Guh… Where is it? Where are you, cat?!”

Forcing my faltering legs onward, I scanned my surroundings, trying to spot a stray cat hidden in the shadows of the undergrowth.

It should have been a much easier task than sniping a car a kilometer away with an anti-materiel rifle. But with my concentration disrupted by the pain, the cat’s characteristic assassin-like stealth was a formidable opponent.

“Hah, hah…”

Finally, my respiratory functions began to fail, and I gasped from severe oxygen deprivation. The time limit was near. Probably less than a few minutes remaining.

It was in that moment that I detected a flicker of movement in the corner of my cloudy vision.

Slowly, a ball of white, black, and brown fur emerged from deep within a thicket.

It was, of all things, the very same stray cat I had faced yesterday. The characteristics of its tabby markings matched perfectly.

My opponent from yesterday, when I had challenged it just for practice and suffered a complete defeat without even being able to touch it.

Now, I had to defeat that formidable enemy in my wounded state.

Pushing aside the self-doubt, I focused all my nerves on the cat before me.

Of course I would do it. If I couldn’t, my only option was to fail here and die.

“…Guh.”

But. The moment I faced the cat, the muscles in my legs gave out. Having lost even the strength to support my own weight, I collapsed to the ground.

Not yet, not yet… I desperately reached out a trembling hand, trying to hold on to my fading consciousness.

The cat looked down at me, sprawled on the grass and dying, as if observing something strange.

Its form, unmoving like a small mountain, was cruelly indifferent. Just as a great god cannot comprehend the suffering of a puny human, an insurmountable distance existed between the cat and me.

(Is this… it?)

As my strength drained away with each passing second…

—It’s because cats are scared of people, but they love people just as much.

A voice suddenly resurfaced in my mind.

As if guided by it, I ceased all movement.

I closed my eyes and suppressed even my breathing to the absolute limit.

I feigned a state as close to death as possible, just one step short of true death’s arrival.

And then…

(The mountain… moved!)

My sharpened hearing picked up the faint rustle of grass being stepped on.

Putting forward a cream-puff-like paw, the stray cat was approaching my motionless form. Slowly, ploddingly, one step at a time.

That’s right—if chasing it doesn’t close the distance, then I just have to make it close the distance itself.

(Four meters… three and a half… three… Not yet, not yet!)

My heartbeat grew weaker with every second. I crushed the instinctive fear of death with the power of my will and focused everything on remaining still.

(Two and a half meters… two… one and a half… one…)

The rustling sound of the undergrowth drew steadily closer.

The evening wind had grown stronger. Amidst it, I could hear the faint sound of nasal breathing right by my ear.

Sniff, sniff, sniff. Snuffle, snuffle, snuffle.

Sniff, sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff, sniff.

The cat brought its nose close to my cheek, sniffing at me intently.

(—Now!!)

The very instant I felt the tickle of its hard whiskers against my face.

I gathered the last of my strength into my back and arms and sprang up.

Caught completely off guard, the cat froze, its eyes wide and round.

Cats may boast unparalleled high-speed mobility, but they have a weakness in this kind of instantaneous decision-making. It is for this reason that supposedly nimble cats sometimes get hit by cars on the road.

An unbelievably soft elasticity overflowed in my arms as I hugged it tight.

***

The suicide program virus, Krov’vy Klyatva—the Blood-Soaked Vow—injected into all Sem’ya by the Domik to prevent betrayal, can only be suppressed by the regular administration of an inhibitor.

The virus’s incubation period varies greatly, from two days to a week, with no discernible pattern. Once activated, it causes a massive proliferation of the protein-degrading enzyme, initiator caspase, within the cells, leading to a cascade reaction that sequentially shuts down the host’s biological functions.

The host is afflicted with intense pain and malaise spreading throughout the body for approximately ten minutes, during which their bodily functions gradually decline, ultimately resulting in death by cardiopulmonary arrest.

There is no known antidote or cure to eradicate the Krov’vy Klyatva once it has been injected into the body, and it is believed that there is no preventative or sedative effect other than the administration of the inhibitor systematically managed by the Domik.

However, as a result of my own independent research, I have discovered a phenomenon that, while temporary, has a sedative effect on the activated virus besides the inhibitor.

That is the activation of the immune system by an allergic reaction caused by contact with a cat allergen.

—From the research records of Yuki Petrisheva

***

“Achoo!!”

An intense itch welled up from the back of my nose, and I let out a sneeze so big it made my whole body jump.

In that moment, my hold loosened. The furry, invertebrate creature of white and brown that had been captured there escaped with a furious spin. And for good measure, it kicked me square in the solar plexus with its hind legs.

“Gofu-?!”

Gasping from the impact of the powerful cat-kick, I fell onto my rear. I watched the stray’s retreating figure as it fled for its life across the darkening riverbed.

In any case, for now, somehow—

“I survived… I guess.”

Though tormented by the itching and runny nose of my allergies, I savored the feeling of life that I had grasped in my hands. My heart had regained its strong beat, and the pain throughout my body had vanished.

My strength gave out from relief and exhaustion, and I fell backward onto the grassy ground. The vast indigo-blue sky fell down to fill my entire field of vision.

—I’m sure the cats will help you regain what you’ve lost.

Yuki’s last words to me floated up, overlapping with the twinkling of the evening star.

What was she trying to tell me back then? Like a riddle that can never be solved, I am always thinking about its meaning.

I lay there like that for a while, trying to feel the Earth’s rotation as I watched the light in the sky slowly fade.

Eventually, the sound of footsteps, larger than a cat’s, began to mix with the quiet wind blowing in the twilight.

I turned my head to see a girl in the same uniform as me.

Matsukaze Kohana. She was breathing heavily, as if she had rushed here, and her cheeks were flushed an even deeper pink than usual.

“…Anya, are you okay? You looked so pale when you ran out, everyone was worried.”

I could tell that Kohana, too, was concerned for me.

“Heave-ho.”

Kohana came up beside me and crouched down.

“Here. You left your bag on your desk.”

She placed my school bag on the grass and smiled faintly.

“You brought this all the way here for me? My apologies.”

As I sat up using my abdominal muscles, Kohana looked at my face with a blank expression. Then, she took a pack of pocket tissues from her own bag.

“Your nose is running. Ahahaha, you’re ruining your beautiful face.”

“…I’ll borrow this.”

Feeling awkward, I pulled out a few tissues and, in a fit of desperation, blew my nose as loudly as I could.

“Oh, that’s right, you’re allergic to cats, aren’t you? But I’m glad you finally got to touch the kitty from yesterday.”

Kohana watched me with an amused smile as my nasal passages cleared.

“Thank you. You saved me.”

“It’s fine, really. You’re being so dramatic over some tissues.”

Kohana laughed it off, but that wasn’t what I wanted to thank her for.

On the brink of death, if I hadn’t remembered her words, I would have become a corpse right here. Without ever fulfilling the promise I made to my friend, Yuki.

The riverbed was now cloaked in an evening darkness so thick I couldn’t see more than a few meters ahead. In the gloom, the profile of Kohana walking beside me was faintly illuminated in a pale blue.

The pure, untainted goodwill of a girl living in a peaceful country.

Still struggling with the unfamiliar, ticklish feeling of it, I climbed the slope of soft grass.

***

From there, I walked with Kohana for about seven or eight minutes to the station area along the private railway line.

With a bus terminal and rotary at the north exit and a shopping arcade at the south exit, the area around the station was the liveliest part of this town.

As a way of thanking her, I accompanied her into a drugstore that was a tenant in the arcade.

“Are you shopping for something?”

“Yeah. Food for my cats at home. My mom asked me to pick up some more this morning.”

With that, Kohana went to the pet food section, picked up a bag of cat food, and put it in her shopping basket.

Then another one of the same kind. And another. And one more for good measure.

“Are you buying that much?!”

“Yep. It’s food for twelve, after all.”

Kohana said it so casually, but when you thought about it calmly, that was quite a number. You could form a soccer team with cats and still have one left over.

I noticed that among the food in her basket, there was one bag of a different kind. The label read “For Senior Cats.”

“That one’s for my old lady cat, Moo-san. Apparently, the salt content and nutrients are different to be healthier for her.”

Kohana explained, perhaps sensing my interest.

“When cats get old, their kidneys inevitably start to go bad.”

When she said that, Kohana’s cheerful expression seemed to cloud over for just a moment.

I had only just met Kohana, but my impression of her from today was almost entirely of her smiling face. The sudden gap of her sorrowful expression drew my attention.

As if to cover up my strange restlessness, I looked around the bright, ivory-toned interior of the store.

“As expected of a prosperous station area, many of our school’s students seem to use this place.”

The store was filled with girls wearing the same Tobamori Girls’ High School uniform as Kohana and me. Even considering it was after school, there seemed to be an unusually large number of them.

“Ufufu, the location is part of it. But really, there’s another reason,” Kohana said with a mischievous, knowing smile, as if sharing a top secret.

“Look, see the register at the very back?”

She discreetly pointed toward the entrance. A line of checkout counters ran along the all-glass wall. Four in total.

At the farthest counter, a female clerk who looked to be in her mid-twenties was serving customers with a smile.

The first thing I noticed was her height; she was tall and slender. She must have been 172 or 173 centimeters tall.

Moreover, she had the proportions of a supermodel. Her slender, straight posture was like that of a fashion model or a volleyball player.

And she was beautiful, with distinct features and long eyelashes. Her bangs, styled to look wet, fell casually over her eyes, creating a cool and mysterious aura.

She radiated a strong presence that drew the eye even from a distance. She had such glamour that even the apron with the store’s “Sakura Drug” logo emblazoned on it looked like part of a fashion statement.

“She’s a different type from you, Anya, but isn’t she an incredibly handsome beauty? That’s Kurisu Akira-san. She’s the idol of Tobamori Girls’. Everyone comes here to see her.”

Kohana leaned in close and whispered in my ear.