Chapter 34
Late at night, Ruan was looking down at the cat sleeping beside him.
After an eventful day, the cat was sleeping soundly, its fluffy cheeks pressed flat, completely oblivious to the world. In the dark silence, the cat’s side rose and fell shallowly.
When they first met, it seemed to act like a stray cat, but now it looked like a pampered house cat that anyone could see had been well-cared for by humans.
As Ruan felt the gentle breathing from where he touched the cat, he recalled his conversation with the Grand Duke.
The Grand Duke, looking somewhat tired and entrusting his body to Ruan’s hands, had spoken in his usual matter-of-fact voice.
‘I don’t intend to lose my territory ever again.’
Those words naturally brought to mind the events of a few years ago when the Grand Duke had lost his territory.
That winter, an unprecedented horde of monsters had descended upon Reinke like a tidal wave. The monster’s momentum was said to be so tremendous that even the impregnable walls of Reinke, which had never fallen before, shook.
For Emperor Volker, who had been watching the previous Grand Duke who didn’t support him, that winter was the perfect time to carry out his long-awaited plan. Volker stripped Reinke of its power to defend itself at its most vulnerable moment. Reinke collapsed with its hands and feet tied.
The fall of Reinke, the stalwart shield of the North.
Ruan had read about this event as text.
For the reader Kim Ha-jin, the ‘Fall of Reinke’ was a side branch of the narrative. It wasn’t directly depicted in the story, so it should be called a ‘setting’ rather than an ‘event’. A setting created to emphasize the villain’s cruelty and put a weapon in the protagonist’s hands. That’s all it was.
But now, as Ruan Daen, feeling the breathing of the cat sleeping next to him, the Fall of Reinke could no longer be just a peripheral setting in the narrative for him.
The Grand Duke’s gruff and concise tone was no different from when reading it as text, but now Ruan Daen could read many things in it.
What his territory meant to the Grand Duke, who was both a cat and a lord.
How painful the loss of territory, briefly mentioned by the protagonist, must have been for the Grand Duke.
What weight protecting his territory held for the Grand Duke who had gone through such times.
And… how painful the events that would unfold two years later, according to the novel, would be for such a Grand Duke.
“Tales of the Sirah Empire” was a story of destruction.
The characters struggle for what they desire, but none of them truly find happiness.
They meet endings where they either die, or so much is broken and lost that all that remains is a life that will continue amidst the ruins.
The ambitious one who pursued the highest position is absurdly killed by the servant he regarded as the most worthless, the princess who fought to reclaim her beloved country holds her coronation alone in an empire where everything she loved has been damaged or disappeared, and the adoration of the saved boy turns into boiling love-hate and betrayal that irreparably breaks both him and his counterpart.
And a certain lord who, despite never wanting it, gets caught up in their power struggle, who only wanted to protect his own territory.
He loses what he had painstakingly restored in that man-made disaster and faces a bleak and cruel winter without preparation.
Ruan looked at the cat sleeping deeply, its cheek squished against the blanket.
He sincerely wished for the happiness of this frustrating, disobedient, and stubborn Grand Duke cat.
Not days spent always on edge, wary of everything, constantly fearing the loss of his territory, startling awake from light sleep to survey his surroundings. But days where the most serious problem in life was finding a comfortable position to roll around in, falling asleep cuddled up to his caretaker, and continuing a daily life where he brazenly pushed his head forward instead of being startled when a hand was extended.
He wished for the Grand Duke not to experience those terrible events.
For that to happen.
‘I need to protect Reinke.’
Originally, he had been thinking about protecting the Grand Duke, and by extension Reinke, from Louise who would come in the future.
But that wasn’t enough.
‘Not just from that event, but afterwards too, I need to make sure Reinke doesn’t waver from other threats.’
Because Reinke’s stability was an essential condition for the Grand Duke’s happiness.
‘How can I help Reinke?’
Ruan began to ponder ways to protect and develop Reinke.
He dug up everything from what he had learned in Reinke to what he had seen and heard in his previous life, thinking and rethinking.
Until the dawn broke dimly, and the cat’s two eyes, resembling the morning star, opened.
* * *
The development and well-being of Reinke was extremely important for the happiness of the Grand Duke, and for Ruan’s happiness as he lived as the Grand Duke’s caretaker and assistant.
But the happiness of cats and humans isn’t determined solely by such large and important matters.
For the happy and healthy lives of both cats and humans, small, trivial, and everyday aspects are also important.
For example… managing a cat’s fur.
Ruan, sitting at his desk organizing documents, found his gaze stopping on the Grand Duke’s tail, which released a tremendous amount of fur with each movement.
The Grand Duke was basically a long-haired breed with a double coat. Moreover, as if the tail length changed with body size, the Grand Duke in human mode had quite a long tail, and proportionally, the area from which fur was released was also wide.
Ruan felt dizzy as he clearly saw long fur flying up every time the Grand Duke’s tail swayed in the sunlight.
Ruan’s gaze moved to the carpet below, which was covered in clumps of black fur.
‘Cat fur doesn’t just stick, it embeds itself, making it really hard to remove…’
As Ruan was pondering how to deal with this, he cautiously opened his mouth.
“Your Grace… do you really hate… brushing that much?”
“I hate it.”
The answer was firm, making Ruan’s careful approach seem pointless. Nevertheless, finding it difficult to give up on brushing, Ruan spoke again.
“But wouldn’t it feel refreshing for Your Grace if we remove all the dead fur with brushing? It would also reduce the amount of… fur you ingest while grooming.”
Despite Ruan’s appeal, the Grand Duke’s response remained unchanged.
“I still hate it.”
Ruan translated “Why do you hate it so much, you cat?” into Grand Duke-cat language and said:
“Could you tell me why you’re so averse to brushing? Then I could find a way to address…”
But his carefully softened and elongated words were cut off by the irritated cat before he could finish.
“Do I look like a kitten who can’t manage his own fur and needs to be groomed all the time?”
‘Ah.’
So that’s how brushing was perceived.
But if that’s the case…
“Then when Your Grace occasionally grooms me…”
“You’re my subordinate, aren’t you?”
Ruan stared blankly at the Grand Duke, who said this with a shameless face while swishing his tail and releasing fur.
‘Just you wait. Someday I’ll definitely hug you tight and brush you thoroughly. I’ll brush you mercilessly.’
After making a promise he might not be able to keep, Ruan realized that while managing the cat’s fur would require finding opportunities and methods since this unlimited fur generator refused brushing…
He could immediately start improving the living space full of cat fur.
And for that, what he needed was…
‘A lint roller.’
He needed a lint roller, the essential tool for cat owners.
* * *
To think he’d be making a lint roller after coming to another world.
‘Everyone else makes something amazing when they go to another world.’
Making soap, gunpowder… and even further, antibiotics, underfloor heating, or steam engines. Wasn’t it a cliché in isekai stories to quickly create things that are common in modern times but don’t exist in the other world, and then show off in front of the other world people who are amazed by these unheard-of modern inventions?
But unfortunately, Ruan was an utterly ordinary humanities person, and he only knew how to use not just modern inventions, but even pre-modern ones, not how to make them himself.
‘To think even in possession, science majors have an advantage…’
Anyway, no matter how much Ruan searched through his modern knowledge, he couldn’t find anything that would surprise the other world people like other possessed individuals could. Rather, it was Ruan who was constantly amazed by the other world people who knew how to start fires, handle bows and axes well, and even beat up orcs.
He did seem to remember making soap in elementary school, either in Wise Living or Science class… but the fact that he couldn’t even remember which class it was in already showed how hopeless Ruan was.
But even such a weak humanities modern person could, with effort, make something similar to…
The lint roller, the essential tool and eternal friend of cat owners.
Cats are creatures whose fur falls out and regrows before it even has a chance to get dirty.
Living with such a cat meant a repetition of cleaning up, turning around to find new fur rolling about, cleaning again, and turning to find yet more new fur. Of course, if you’re a bit careless about managing your clothes, you’re bound to hear “You must have a cat” at least ten times in one outing.
From the perspective of humans who can’t sense pheromones or anything else, cat fur seemed to be how cats marked their territory and asserted their presence.
How on earth could so much fur fall out and yet there still be more fur to fall out? Ruan sometimes fantasized that humanity should look for the solution to hair loss in cats’ miraculous hair follicles.
After such a creature started coming to sleep with him every night, Ruan’s bedroom had long since become covered in fur. Every time he saw the bedding that had turned black with clumped cat fur and white clothes that had become utterly unwearable, he missed lint rollers and dryers with a duvet-shaking function so much.
And now this cat had started shedding fur during the day too. In a situation where he was with the cat all day long, day and night, he could no longer postpone the development of a lint roller.
With a determined face, Ruan began searching for materials that could be used for a prototype lint roller.
