I rubbed my face wildly all over his, purring like crazy, and the patron bastard looked just as delighted, not knowing what to do with himself. Only after showering him with praise for a long while did I finally manage to regain my senses.
When I looked up with sparkling eyes, the patron slowly opened his mouth.
“The way to break the curse is…”
W–wait, the way?!
“The way is…”
The way?!
Annoyed by the way he kept dragging it out, I smacked the floor with my tail, thwap, thwap.
I’m gonna suffocate waiting at this rate. Hurry up and say it already! Hurry up! Right now!
At my urging, the patron gave a sly, crescent-eyed smile and opened his mouth again.
“They said I just have to call your true name.”
……
……
What did you just say?
“I heard that if your true name is spoken, the curse will be lifted.”
At the patron’s repeated words, I froze solid.
True… name?
The patron gently scooped up my frozen body and strode over to the bed. Then he climbed onto it, lifted me up with both hands, brought our faces close, and said,
“To tell me your true name, you’d have to turn back into a human first, right?”
The smile in his eyes looked suspiciously—no, excessively—pleased. Somehow, he reminded me of a male lion I’d seen in some animal kingdom documentary, smacking his lips in front of prey he’d already caught.
I stared dumbly at the patron’s snout as it crept closer and closer.
If my true name is called, the curse is lifted? True name. True name. True name. True name. Tru—
Agh—! No—!!!!
I snapped back to my senses and flailed, swiping my front paws at the patron’s face as it closed in, struggling wildly.
Meow! Nyaaang! Kyaaang!
“K?!”
Startled by my frantic thrashing, the patron set me down on the bed. I screeched sharply at him—Kyaaak!—then dashed for the bedroom door, paws scrambling.
“K!”
He called after me and followed. Just before slipping through the open door, I turned back once more and hissed angrily at him—Kyaak!—before bolting out.
I barricaded myself under the bed in my rarely used room, panting hard, my chest heaving. My heart was pounding so violently it felt like I’d just run a hundred-meter sprint. My whole body felt icy, like I was standing on top of a skyscraper. I glanced toward the door, then crawled as deep as I could into a spot the patron’s hands couldn’t reach, curling myself up tight.
Damn that old witch!
Out of nowhere, she makes it so a kiss at night turns me back into a human, and now what—my true name? What kind of freezing-hell true name is that?! That old witch hag has some serious emotional issues. How the hell do you pick that as the method for breaking a curse?!
[I heard that if your true name is spoken, the curse will be lifted.]
My true name?! My true name?!
My name is K! I am, unmistakably, a cold city cat—no, a cold city man—named K!
I scratched at the floor with my claws for a while, then let out a deep sigh and flopped down, resting my chin on my front paws.
Still, at least now there is a way to break the curse. That… bizarre method where it breaks just by calling my true name. But there’s absolutely no way I can teach my patron my true name. My name is K, period.
K! A name that suits a chic city man!
Isn’t there some other way?
It’s not like there has to be only one way to break a curse, right? There could be another method. Even when you build a house, you make both a front door and a back door—so when you cast a curse, doing the same thing is only right. Absolutely.
But if that really is the only way… what then?
Of course the curse should be broken, but the idea of telling my patron my true name makes me want to lose my mind. I hate it. I absolutely, absolutely hate it. If he hears my name, the patron will definitely…
Anyway. I’d rather just not break the curse at all. Hmph.
……Wait. Do I really need to break the curse right now?
I already know how to break it, and it’s such an easy method I could do it anytime. That means I can lift the curse whenever I feel like it.
And honestly, I’m more than satisfied with my current life.
There’s tons of fun I could never enjoy in human form.
I can rub my face to my heart’s content against the maids’ bouncy, springy chests, kneading them under the guise of making biscuits. I curl up in my patron’s arms to sleep, stick close to him wherever he goes, and fleece doddering old nobles. Things I could never do as a human.
I narrowed my eyes and swayed my tail lazily.
Come to think of it, if I fully turned back into a human, there’d be all kinds of things I wouldn’t be able to do anymore. The maids’ bouncy chests, ripping off nobles, sticking close to my patron wherever I go—everything I like the most would be gone. And on top of that…
[To tell me your true name, you’d have to turn back into a human first, right?]
If I turn back into a human, I won’t have any way to stop him when he transforms into that… thing. He’ll obviously be eyeing my ass, trying to shove his thing in at every opportunity. Sure, he’s the type who’d never force it if I said no—but the problem is, he’s insanely good at getting me all worked up and then smoothly sliding past my resistance. Hell, I only allowed the kiss in the first place because I was drunk on the booze he fed me.
Yeah. If I break the curse and go back to being human now, I’d just be doing him a favor. There’s absolutely no need for me to lift the curse at this point. None at all. Totally.
I quietly got up and slipped out from under the bed. Then, snickering to myself, I began padding toward the bedroom where the patron would be.
“K.”
When I entered the bedroom, the patron lit up with a happy expression. I gave him a sweet little Nyaaang—then hopped straight into the basket where Big Guy was waiting. Wrapping my arms around Big Guy, I started rolling around dramatically, left and right.
“K. We need to break the curse.”
The patron knelt in front of the basket and spoke in a gentle voice. Hugging Big Guy, I shot him a sideways glance and snorted dismissively.
As if. I’m never telling you my true name!
He seemed to catch my meaning. The patron’s face, which had been meltingly soft with a smile, stiffened with a sharp crack. I didn’t care. I hugged Big Guy tighter, rolling around and whispering affection to him.
Big Guy. Let’s live together for a hundred years, ten thousand years, just you and me. Got it?
