Chapter 10
After that, I ended up spending far more peaceful, uneventful days in the prince’s palace than I’d expected.
Shulayman would come in late every evening, work until dawn, sleep a light couple of hours, then leave in the morning. Since the first day, when he drew a line and told me not to come near, he hadn’t even glanced my way.
At first that didn’t feel like a big deal. After all, what I wanted from him was already decided.
But after a day, two days, a week passed, being unable to get close to him started to become a problem. I needed to steal a kiss from the sleeping prince if I wanted to have any chance of turning back into a human.
This troublemaker prince, afflicted with chronic insomnia, simply didn’t sleep properly.
“Should I slip him a sleeping pill like last time?” I thought. I even considered asking Aziz for help, but I still felt reluctant to accept his aid.
So I resolved to try on my own and spent every night wide-eyed, waiting for him to fall asleep. But I always fell asleep first. I dozed off again and again—sometimes even drooling at the corners of my mouth—as I drifted into dreamland.
One day I decided to take a long nap during the day and stay up all night, but the result was always the same.
“I have to do something about this damn sleep…” I muttered.
It’s normal for a kitten to sleep all day, but strangely, as soon as he returned to his bedroom I became overwhelmingly sleepy. At that point I began to suspect his sleepiness was somehow flowing into me.
“What are you thinking about, kitty?” Arin asked in a whisper as she gently brushed my fur.
“Meow.” (Nothing.)
“Hehe, good kitty.” Arin, who loved cats, always talked to me as if I understood every word. Most of it was really just Arin’s monologue, though.
From early morning until the late afternoon she took care of me, and the little girl’s habitual monologues usually went like this:
“I started working in the palace when I was very young, so I haven’t made many friends.”
“I only have one older brother, but he’s so busy I hardly ever see him.”
“I hope the kitty will be my best friend. Will you be my friend?”
She was still quite young by modern standards, but she said those things so matter-of-factly it made my chest ache a little. So I would reply with little meows sometimes and use body language to play along.
That old saying—“The servants think they play with the cat, but really it’s the other way around”—turned out to be true.
Arin kept bringing new toys and showing them to me as if presenting a collection; some of them weren’t great, honestly. But I always acted delighted because I was genuinely pleased to see her happy.
“Starting today, we’re going into special grooming. On Friday, Lord Shulayman’s inauguration as governor will finally be held,” she said.
“Meow?” (Really?)
“They’re preparing a grand party after the inauguration. They say people from all across the kingdom sent the prince huge gifts. It would be nice to show some to the kitty too!”
When I snorted as if I didn’t care, Arin, reading my expression like a ghost, wagged a finger and continued talking.
“Hehe, among the gifts that have arrived, there are plenty for the kitty. There are a lot of people trying to win the kitty’s favor.”
…What would they want by trying to win my favor?
I twitched my whiskers in confusion, and Arin chattered on.
“Right now the palace is buzzing with rumors that the ‘prophesied cat’ will make an appearance this time. At the inauguration and party, the kitty will be the center of attention after the prince.”
Her eyes burned with the zeal of someone on a mission as she clenched her fist.
“I’m not interested in that kind of thing…” I thought.
Arin had already ordered dozens of dresses for cats, crowns, pearl necklaces, ribbons, and dozens of other accessories. But whether I was in human form or not, being dressed up as a cat didn’t make me particularly happy.
Unfortunately, there was no way for me to tell this kind, innocent girl how I felt, so all I could do was humor her in front of her.
“I’ll make you the prettiest one around, kitty.” Arin meticulously brushed my fur until it gleamed.
When she finished, she sprayed something on my skin that she said was good for it, which made me want to laugh.
“Meow.” (Feels nice.)
Receiving a skin massage and nail care as a cat—things I’d never gotten in my previous life—felt oddly pleasant.
“Does that feel good, kitty?”
“Meow.” (Yes. It’s great.)
I decided to enjoy the moment and closed my eyes gently.
After spending time with me until the sun set, Arin reluctantly left the room. I flopped down in a corner of the room that now felt rather cozy and let out a long yawn.
“Tonight, I’ll hold out until he falls asleep somehow,” I told myself.
Shulayman had looked a little unwell ever since I first arrived, but in the past few days his condition had reached its worst. His face, which had been a bluish-green yesterday, had gone almost pale white by the time he left this morning—he didn’t seem in good shape.
“According to Aziz, he should be getting better…” I thought. Aziz had said that if I stayed by his side his condition would improve. But Shulayman seemed to be getting steadily worse.
“Do you think they’ll kick me out?” I worried. If I wasn’t needed, I could be discarded anytime. I’d already experienced that in my previous life.
I paced around the dim room anxiously, circling here and there, when suddenly the door slammed open with a bang and a staggering man entered.
Startled by the ear-splitting noise, I darted behind the curtain to hide.
“…Everyone out. Don’t let anyone come near this room.” the man ordered.
“But, Your Highness—!!” someone protested.
“It’s an order. Whoever sets foot in this bedchamber will be prepared to have their head cut off.” he snapped.
When I heard that familiar voice, I peeked out from behind the curtain. There stood the owner of the room—Shulayman.
‘Why does he look like that…?’ I wondered.
He was much more disheveled than his usual frighteningly calm and cold self. He was leaning against the firmly shut door, panting heavily. His unstable breathing made my own heart pound anxiously.
“Damn it…” he muttered.
He fumbled at his collar like someone tearing at shirt buttons in frustration, staggered toward the bed, and collapsed heavily onto it.
After hesitating for a moment, I tentatively stepped out from behind the curtain and quietly padded toward the bed where he lay.
“Ugh…” he moaned faintly.
When his restless movements on the sheet stopped, my heart dropped as if it had fallen from my chest.
‘What if he’s dead…?!’ I thought. I’d experienced something similar before—in my past life when someone had a heart attack right before dying.
The thought that someone might die in front of me made my whole body chill.
“No—!!” I cried.
Without thinking of calling for help, I leapt onto the bed toward him, determined to get as close as I could.
But the bed was a huge obstacle for a little kitten. Although my legs had grown a bit chunkier from eating well lately and I jumped with all my might, the height of the bed was impossible to scale.
I couldn’t give up over something like that.
‘I have to get up there somehow…!’
I grabbed at the bedsheet and managed to clamber up inch by inch. When I finally reached the top, I cried out in triumph like a mountaineer who’d just summited Everest.
‘No, this isn’t the time for that,’ I scolded myself.
I crawled close to Shulayman’s face and nudged my paw lightly against his nose to see if he was still breathing. Thankfully, his breathing was fragile but present.
“Meow.” (Phew.)
Relieved, I smoothed my chest with a paw.
As I scanned his overall condition, something strange caught my eye.
‘What on earth is that…?’
Between the opened edges of his loosened shirt, a dark shadow slithered and writhed. The black shape, which looked as if it had a life of its own, at first glance resembled a large tattoo. The ominous black mark crawled like a snake, slowly moving toward the left side of his chest.
“Ugh—” Shulayman winced as if someone were stabbing him with a needle. He bit his lip so hard his gums bled.
‘What should I do—what should I do…!’ I panicked.
Before he came to this room, I had been worrying about how to attempt another kiss. Now that seemed impossible—this was no time for that.
I flicked my tail wildly with growing unease.
‘Wake up! Snap out of it!’ I tried to rouse him by licking and lightly nipping his cheek, but Shulayman didn’t budge.
Then something strange happened. When I put my paw on his chest as if to shake him, the black energy froze exactly where my paw touched.
“W-what…?” I squeaked.
I groped Shulayman’s firm chest with my paw. Each spot I touched made the black shape fade a little. Encouraged, I pressed and rubbed my body more actively against his chest and shoulders.
As if by magic, Shulayman’s breathing slowly began to return to normal.
“Hoo…” the breath came out steady and easier. His chest rose and fell at regular intervals.
‘Could it be that my touching him stabilizes his condition?’ I wondered.
I’d heard something like that before—some viruses grow stronger when vaccines enter the body. What if I acted as an antidote to whatever illness he had? Maybe the “curse” Aziz mentioned had gone berserk trying to possess his body when I came near.
‘Am I the vaccine for that curse…?’ I thought. Considering how quickly his condition had dropped in recent days, that hypothesis felt plausible.
But an unexpected side effect appeared immediately. Once the black figure that had nearly covered his heart vanished completely, my own strength drained out of me.
‘I’m dizzy.’
A strange sensation as if all the blood in my body were sinking to the floor. The ceiling spun and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
“Meow…” (Ugh…)
In the end, I blacked out and fainted beside him.
