Part 22: The Standoff

_{content warning: animal death, emetophobia, violence}

[BGM: Cat and Mouse]


The Feline King

It was the middle of the night. The full moon was high up in the sky.
A group of cats wqere gathering at the empty lot near the street.
There were both housecats and stray cats. They formed a circle around a big empty pipe in the center of the lot.



On top of the pipe sat a fat black cat. He was giving his usual speech.
It was unsurprisingly about how humans like pet dogs, and what we should do to make the humans like us more.

Those two-legged, walking monkeys only considered dogs to be smarter than cats because the dogs would fetch newspapers for them.
But the truth was the opposite.
Why should be wother to beg for the stupid humans, who couldn't even tell that cats were smarter than dogs, to like us?

I turned the dead sparrow in front of me around, making sure that there was nothing edible left.
No matter how many times I had tried it, the taste of the organs was still disgusting to me.
Yuck... I puked out a puddle of yellow liquid. A couple of house cats nearby sprinted away from me.

Pfft. Pussies.



Blackie, the fat black cat, kept rambling on with his boring and pointless speech.
I was picking my teeth with my claws. Suddenly, I felt a chill in the air.

It was already late autumn. Soon it would be the worst season for us stray cats.
I was one year old now, almost 20 in human years, so I was fairly strong. Still, lots of homeless cats had died at my age.

Instead of wasting my time figuring out how to please those monkeys, I'd rather be preparing for the winter.
That pipe seemed like a good place to use as shelter.

I walked towards Blackie and jumped up to the pipe.
Every shining eye stared at me, including Blackie's. He completely forgot what he was talking about.

“Excuse me, may I lie down here for a bit? You may keep going.”

You thought I would say that? Pfft.
Winner takes all. The loser loses it all.
And I, Spottie, wanted it all!



I stared at Blackie and puffed up my fur.
That's right. Overwhelming my opponent was the way I do it!

He raised a dried salted fish.
I spat on his face.
Blackie was surprised by my spit, but he immediately swung the salted fish and hit my face with it.

This enormous piece of dried salted fish represented unquestionable authority.
Whoever had the dried salted fish was the leader of the cats.
Furthermore, whoever was attacked by the dried salted fish, which right now meant me, would be considered the public enemy of the entire cat clan.



A dozen cats sprung at me, biting my ears, clawing my paws, stepping on my back...
Humans had a saying, “two fists were no match for four hands”, and I was facing forty claws.
Ouch, ouch, ouchie...

Spottie



[BGM: The Darkness]


The Standoff

The warehouse now looked like a scene from hell, with bodies lying all over the ground.
Lieutenant Kang's eyes were colder than ice.
He looked nothing like himself anymore.
He turned around slowly, and stared at me as if I was only a bug.

What had just happened?
Was he pulling a prank on me?
But he looked entirely serious when he killed Choi Yo-Han with one blow.
Or rather... Was this some kind of initiation test? A test that I had to pass to become an official member of Unit 4?



My brain was still completely disoriented when my body jumped backward by instinct.
There was nothing left in the Lieutenant's stare, except deadly menace.
It was no prank, nor a test.
I could feel that what was standing in front of me at this moment was not a normal human, but a dangerous beast.
It was waiting for me to expose my vulnerability, so that he could lunge at me and tear out my throat.



We were both standing dead still,
we were both staring deep into each other's eyes,
and we were both thinking of the best ways to prevail.

I didn't have enough confidence...
Even at the Shaolin Temple, I had never faced an opponent like this before.

Nevertheless, I began to feel something, perhaps because of my training at the temple.
I was feeling nothing but growing excitement, and I was eager to give it my all in this fight.
It was almost as if I had been waiting for this day my whole life.

It would not do me any good if we kept stalling like this. I decided to at least poke my opponent first.
In the world of Kung Fu, speed defines the winner.
Time to fight!

He raised the gun.
I flung my “tail” out as hard as I could.



I took a shot and flung my “tail” out from my sleeve.
The spear head cut through the air with a shimmer, aimed at Lieutenant Kang's right hand, which was holding his gun.
But it stopped right before the Lieutenant.

Lieutenant Kang's left hand clenched into a fist, and he slowly lowered it.
He was holding my “tail” firmly in his hand, despite having been cut by the spear tip.
Blood was dripping down from his wrist.
Behind his fist, his eyes were staring at me with nothing but contempt.

No one had been able to stop my “tail” with their bare hands before.
At this point I had no choice but to drop my weapon.
But Lieutenant Kang had finally seen his chance.

He sprinted at me, still holding my “tail” in his left hand and the gun in his right.
Then I heard a gunshot, before I sank into an infinite darkness, filled with nothing but regret.

[BGM: Silence]


A few weeks later, I woke up in the ICU of Busan Metropolital Hospital.
I was incredibly lucky to survive the shot to my head.
However, the bullet was lodged inside my skull in a delicate spot, so the doctors could not take it out.
As a result I had to endure occasional migraines for the rest of my life.

With my health condition, I thought that I would be reassigned to some boring post, like the Archives.
But I didn't expect that they would ask me to resign.

The police paid me a lot of money as compensation, but that was not what I had wanted.
I wanted to be a police officer!
How could everything turn out like this?

Chang Gyeong-Min

[BGM: Cat and Mouse]


Hmm... a piece of dried fish and a gun...

I think I could come up with something funny here.

But can I really just switch them like this? How could a cat be holding a gun?

Of course. That's what our power is. No matter what, events will unfold exactly according to your arrangement of the text.

Even if it's something ridiculous, or even supernatural, it is still within the realm of the reasonable for us.



This is how we were able to help Jimmy's class win the relay race. All we did was switch Jimmy from the last leg to the third leg, remember? As long as the internal logic of the story is not self-contradictory, there won't be any problems.

In this case, what kind of logic shall we consider self-contradictory?

For example, earlier we discussed that after someone fainted or even died, he or she would not be able to perform additional actions. Therefore, any additional actions after a piece where the subject passes out, or worse, would automatically disappear.

Okay... I think I've got it.