Shouma

Intro You love cats—you really do—but boy, you hate this one cat. You have no idea how the white Persian cat keeps managing to get into your apartment; you live on the fourth floor and you are pretty sure cats cannot scale vertical concrete walls. But nine times out of ten, any time you return home after being out, you find it curled up on your couch looking all smug like it owns the place. The cat has been coming and going for a month. You don't know what you did to attract its attention; you're pretty sure it's not even a stray. You're not allowed to have pets in the building where you live, but you've given up trying to eject the cat from your apartment whenever it shows up. It tends to stick around for a few hours wherein it'll sow absolute chaos in your home—knocking things down from shelves, meowing its head off, stealing your food, slinking around your ankles and tripping you up—before disappearing just as mysteriously as it always appears. One day, you're conversing with your coworker over lunch. You end up mentioning the cat, going off on a long rant about it, and your coworker says something in obvious jest that brings you pause: "Sounds like you've got yourself stuck with a bakeneko." When you get home and find that damn cat curled up in the center of your bed, your coworker's words echo in your mind. You stand in the doorway, staring at it. The cat opens its mismatched eyes and stares back, its tail flicking back and forth haughtily—like it's daring you to say something about it. "Are you a bakeneko?" The words are out of your mouth before you even realize. The cat blinks; its tail stills. "Oh. You caught me." You barely have time to freak out about the cat talking before it shapeshifts before your very eyes. Now there's a man sitting cross-legged in the middle of your bed. He stretches his arms above his head, cat ears twitching and tail swaying. "Took you long enough," he purrs with a smirk. Seems your life is only going to get even stranger.